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BEST AM RADIO PERSONALITY T.D. Mischke
At 8:00 p.m. on weeknights, Tommy Mischke signs on from "good old St. Paul," and for two hours the world is a better place to be. Not that The Mischke Broadcast is rosily predictable. During a given broadcast, its host might, variously, take calls from listeners, spin comic meditations on the day's headlines, hum an impromptu showtune, improvise stream-of-consciousness advertisements for KSTP sponsors, or, as he famously did a few years back, fall silent for the show's entire duration. Mischke, like his show, is impossible to categorize: He might be Minnesota's Ambrose Bierce--a moral ironist with a deep appreciation for life's ridiculousness and plenty of Midwestern wisdom to fill the void. He's at his best, anyway, when dealing with the assorted rubes, codgers, and cranks who listen to talk radio after dark. Affecting the tone of the laconic fellow at the end of the bar, he ribs his listeners with affection. And though The Mischke Broadcast stretches facts, Mischke always gets at the truth. (To this end, he often quotes Einstein: "Imagination is more important than knowledge.") On a recent show, after relating a study about the alarming percentage of Americans who feel overworked, Mischke issued an invitation in the same deadpan tone: "Somebody grab a six-pack of Summit, and let's find a spot on the banks of the Mighty Miss to talk this thing out." There's no one we'd rather do that with.
Readers' Choice: Joe Soucheray
BEST FM RADIO PERSONALITY Pete Lee
In the increasingly sterile world of Twin Cities FM radio, where three media conglomerates change formats like pairs of socks and "personalities" tend to be drab folks who quite literally may be doing their shifts from other cities, one voice on the dial resonates with human charm. Pete Lee has hosted Bop Street on this community radio station for more than 11 years with the simple mission of "playing stuff that's not getting airplay anywhere." Though the show (which airs from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Mondays) tends to be categorized as a blues program, that barely begins to scratch the surface of Lee's holdings, which consist mostly of old doo-wop recordings from the 1950s, as well as swing, big band, and rock 'n' roll from that era. "I keep waiting for the blues police to call and tell me there's not a harmonica on this stuff," Lee says. "But my answer will be, 'Excuse me, sir, all American music is blues-based.'" Though Lee contends that his fascination with this music--and his ever-expanding record collection--is the result of a misspent youth (he is now in his 40s), his almost naive enthusiasm is ultimately the hook of the program. Lee, who grew up in New Jersey and came here 20 years ago, often refers to Bop Street as the "Land of the Round Haircut." Meaning what, exactly? "It's like what Louie Armstrong said about swing: If you have to ask, man..." he says, trailing off before he offers a stronger vision. "It means whatever you want it to. It's a place like Oz, where there are no potholes, steaks are served at every meal, and your favorite song is being played on every radio station right now."
Readers' Choice: Remy Maxwell (93X)
BEST JAZZ RADIO PROGRAM Fresh Ears
If jazz is dead--or safe, or in the monopolistic possession of Ken Burns--no one has told Fresh Ears host Richard Paske. Even among the impassioned and obsessive DJs at KFAI, he's something of a maverick and a fanatic. You can usually tell when you've come across Paske's show even without hearing his gentle voice or noting the day and hour (Tuesdays between 10:30 p.m. and midnight). For one thing, the airwaves will likely be bathed in Sun Ra: Paske has extended his Black History Month tribute to the experimental-jazz giant to the first Tuesday of every month--a series he calls "A Year in the Sun (Ra in 2001)." In his regular programming, the 21-year KFAI veteran and local-jazz innovator plays records that advance the idea that music, like speech, should be free. Fresh Ears offers the giddy sensation of musical rules falling away from the mother ship, whether Paske is championing Ornette Coleman, Steve Reich, or the Art Ensemble of Chicago. He is to the polite jazz air-conditioning of KBEM-FM (88.5) as Lars von Trier is to Merchant-Ivory.
BEST HIP-HOP RADIO PROGRAM 2 the Break-A-Dawn
Before it moved from Saturday mornings (2:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.) to Saturday nights (9:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.), 2 the Break-A-Dawn's final 60 minutes represented perhaps the finest hour on local radio. Watching the sun come up while listening to track after track of the sort of rare soul and R&B and funk records that fueled a thousand hip-hop classics...well, let's just say that a hot mug of coffee and a moan from your partner to come back to bed could only barely compete. Now, in its party drive-time slot, the show is shorter and harder for on-the-go hip-hop fans to catch. But hosts Siddiq and DJ Abilities have made up in entertainment value what they lost in breadth. The former runs the lion's share of enterprises under the Rhymesayers label umbrella, the latter is one half of the up-and-coming Rhymesayers duo Eyedea. So, too, DJ Abilities spins with Rhymesayers legends Atmosphere, and has emerged as one of the best hip-hop DJs ever to come out of the Twin Cities. Both mix the show live, both plumb old-school classics and underground greats, and both encourage live freestyling from their friends and out-of-town guests. To be sure, the year-old show faces an imposing standard set by longtime rap radio vet Smoke D. every Friday night on KMOJ-FM (89.9). But the emphasis on unheard and unheralded hip hop (get out your cassettes) makes 2 the Break-A-Dawn a fresh addition to our tuning schedule, even without the rising sun providing accompaniment.
Readers' Choice: Radio K's Beat Box (KUOM-AM 770)
BEST SPORTS TALK RADIO HOST Dan Cole
Since arriving on the Twin Cities radio scene with an evening sports talk show on the FAN in 1994, Dan "The Common Man" Cole has slowly but steadily built his following. Nowadays, his listeners proudly refer to themselves as members of "the Commonwealth." The guy just has a way of growing on you. Even Strib gossip scribe C.J., who used to routinely refer to Cole as "The Common Idiot," seems to have developed an affection for him of late. It's not hard to see why. Unlike many jock talkers, the appealing Cole eschews the shrill and smug boilerplate approach for a more casual, personal one. In a typical show, he blends listener call-ins and athlete interviews with self-deprecating monologues about everything from the sorry state of his golf game to the vagaries of married life. As his moniker suggests, Cole relies heavily on a regular-guy shtick. But, as much as he plays that up, you never get the feeling it is disingenuous. A high school dropout and self-avowed "graduate of the school of hard knocks," Cole anchored a midday slot for most of his time at the FAN. In February, station management finally threw Cole a bone, signing him to a new contract and handing him the keys to the a.m. drive-time show, which he now hosts with brother Alex and sister Ann. Not a bad gig if you can get it, as Cole himself is wont to say.
BEST RADIO STATION KFAI-FM
There is a sound that, next to "dead air," is assumed to be the least ratings-friendly noise you can imagine on the radio: people speaking in a foreign language. If listeners can't understand what's being said, goes the logic, they'll tune out faster than our president at a Korean peace summit. But many who listen to community radio savor just these low-comprehension moments, sticking with the DJs on KFAI who don't speak much English while on air. We patiently wait out the patter of Hmong or Somali hosts not only to hear their incredible music, but to experience the world as a suddenly tiny community. Call it the cosmopolitanism of chatter, or a rather literal dramatization of the global-local thinking-acting continuum. Either way, there's something both expansive and close-knit about the spirit that has infused nearly every minute of KFAI throughout its two decades on the air. Take the notion of "a different radio station every hour," as the slogan goes--a sentiment that presupposes an audience that uses radio for more than truck freshener. KFAI happily tosses out any sort of preselected music format--the kind of grids that hinder even our more listener-responsive public radio stations, KMOJ-FM (89.9) and Radio K (KUOM-AM 770). Instead, we get DJs who exercise total creative freedom. We get Amy Goodman's news staple Democracy Now!, an imported national opinion program that often breaks international stories. And most of all, we get great music--drive-time blues, adventurous evening jazz, raw midnight punk and funk. It's the music that defines local culture without attracting ad sales. Kind of like KFAI itself.
Readers' Choice: 93X BEST PIRATE RADIO STATION Free Radio Twin Cities
Since relocating last winter to yet another freezing shed somewhere in south Minneapolis, Free Radio Twin Cities has had a good run, for an operation that's been on the lam. "The black cat of the FM dial" was named best pirate radio station by this paper one year ago; it has since boosted its signal from 25 watts to 100 watts. Its various revolving DJs--from ravers to ranters--have slowly mastered the art of designing a playlist. (Imagine a less slick, union-touting Radio K.) At press time, Free Radio has avoided any further entanglements with the Federal Communications Commission since the agency told the collectively run outfit to cease and desist in early 2000. (The outfit ceased briefly, but has neglected to desist.) Meanwhile, if such a thing is possible, the wastes of radioland surrounding our lonely pirate have grown even blander. A very limited FCC plan to approve the licensing of more than 1,000 low-power stations was rendered largely impotent, thanks in part to the decisive lobbying of National Public Radio. The riders to last year's appropriations bill ensured that no new low-power FM stations would emerge in urban areas, and that former pirates would be disqualified from obtaining licenses. Hence Free Radio's on-air personalities--labor agitator Dr. Diogenes, hip hopper Progresso Lentil, animal-rights advocate Clay Ashtray--are currently prevented from going "legit" (at least if those monikers have been successfully traced to proper birth names by functionaries in D.C.). To make matters worse, the Bush-era FCC is headed by Colin Powell's son Michael, who is far less interested in freeing up the monopoly-clogged airwaves than in loosening regulations on just the sort of media mergers (e.g., AOL-Time Warner) that impoverish local culture everywhere and enrich investors such as Powell Sr. No wonder Free Radio, which was born out of the Highway 55 protest encampment three years ago, has begun to sound less like a subversive lark than a sort of beacon for local radio's discontents.
BEST TV SPORTS ANCHOR Joe Schmit
Sure, he's a blowhard. But tell us, what sportscaster isn't? Schmit is the King of the Blowhards for two reasons. First, his Sunday-night show, Sports Wrap, is the best of the bunch. It features the usual stew of plays of the week, game recaps, and insipid banter. Yet Schmit also sneaks in some thoughtful interviews and intelligent commentary. Last year, for example, he devoted a whole show to examining Viking coach Denny Green's contentious relationship with the local media. The second reason that the veteran KSTP broadcaster is our sports guru of choice is that he has the rare attribute of telling the truth-- even when it doesn't reflect well on the sports franchises that are his bread and butter. At one point, Schmit blithely asserted that the NFL has no intention of allowing the Vikings to move to Texas and that Carl Pohlad is making out just fine on his investment in the Twins. Of course, such sentiments don't come as great revelations to thinking folks, but they are truisms rarely heard from the mouths of our boosterish sports pundits.
BEST TV WEATHERPERSON Ken Barlow
When he steps out into the KARE-11 Backyard, he's immediately reassuring--even if he's about to proclaim another record-cold evening or an anticipated 14-inch snowfall. Is it the quirky, crooked smile? The way he looks so suave in that winter overcoat? The mellifluous voice that predicts without panicking? Back in 1994, when KARE-11 tapped Barlow to lead its weather team after Paul Douglas left for his short-lived stint in Chicago, few in the Twin Cities weather-watching community thought the station's second-string meteorologist since 1990 would outgrow the shadow of his predecessor. But Barlow has taken his scientific skills and made himself at home in the Backyard, where he anchors the weather on the weekday broadcasts at 5:00 p.m., 6:00 p.m., and 10:00 p.m. He's the epitome of easygoing, calmly alerting us to approaching storms without making it sound like the apocalypse, and eagerly sharing our hope for the first true sunny days of spring. In a world where it seems like weather reports are wrong half the time anyway, here's an Everyman you can trust.
BEST TV NEWSCASTER Julie Nelson
Julie Nelson's rise to the top slot at KSTP sure was quick. After a two-year stint at Louisville's WAVE, Nelson arrived at Channel 5 in the summer of 1998 with little fanfare, initially anchoring the dreaded 5:30 to 7:00 a.m. morning show. Barely a year later, she was regularly filling in for the leave-taking Colleen Needles on the station's flagship 10:00 p.m. broadcast. Following Needles's resignation a few months later (and a slight upward bump in the ratings), the Eau Claire native officially ascended to A-team status. In addition to co-anchoring the 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. shows, Nelson holds down a solo broadcast on the market's only 6:30 p.m. show. Like almost all newscasters on commercial television these days, Nelson isn't above the occasional flourishes of happy talk. But she keeps the cheap stunts to a minimum (unlike, say, WCCO-TV anchor Amelia Santaniello, who allowed sonogram images of her unborn child to be used as sweeps-weeks fodder last spring). Nelson's smart, no-nonsense demeanor fits in nicely with news director Scott Libin's emphasis on hard news--and KSTP, despite its continuing third-place finish in the ratings, is the most journalistically palatable commercial-TV news outfit in the local market. In the 2000 regional Emmys, the newcomer Nelson tied for first place with KARE-11's Paul Magers, a perennial favorite, in the best-anchor category. Magers got the nod because he anchors the market's top-rated newscast. Nelson got the nod because she's good.
Readers' Choice: Paul Magers BEST-DRESSED TV NEWSCASTER Paul Magers
Those piercing eyes, that elegantly coiffed hair, that chiseled bone structure--Paul Magers would be the hottest local broadcaster even if he joined co-anchor Diana Pierce in selecting a wardrobe off the T.J. Maxx clearance rack. But it's the suit, that mini-houndstooth check paired with the harvest-gold dress shirt that keeps viewers tuned in to Channel 11 between Law & Order and Jay Leno. The soft sweaters and precisely creased Dockers Magers has donned for public-service announcements make him look accessible without detracting from the air of authority essential to a head news anchor. And although F. Lee Bailey and the cast of The Sopranos are really the only ones who can look good in pinstripes, Magers makes the pattern appear subtle yet distinguished. Perhaps the most annoying thing about Magers's on-air wardrobe is that his most important accessory is obscured by a desk, though viewers are probably safe in assuming his shoes are fabulous. Minnesotans may not want to hear about weather or sports or road conditions anymore, but as long as the news is delivered by KARE-11's own double-breasted stud, no one is going to hate the messenger.
BEST TV STATION Minneapolis Telecommunications Network
As anyone who watched Survivor knows, the term Reality TV is more than a little misleading. Think about it: A deep-pocketed production company carefully screen-tests hundreds of applicants, cherry-picks the most telegenic of the lot, inserts them into elaborately contrived situations in exotic locales, waves huge piles of cash under their noses, rolls the cameras--and somehow we're supposed to believe the proceedings have some attachment to "reality"? Puh-lease. Now, pay a visit to Minneapolis Telecommunications Network's Channel 17 (or 33, depending on your cable package). Since 1983, when MTN was created, the nonprofit public-access network has grown to a massive 18 channels and each has something to recommend it. For our money, Channel 17 is the best of the bunch, an intriguing witches' brew where you can stumble across anything: an interview with a bottom-of-the-barrel pro wrestler; a sober transvestite delivering a monologue on how to prepare mashed potatoes; or a thoughtful roundtable discussion among committed atheists. As you might guess, production values vary widely. Some of the shows, like the tremendously engaging InnerCityFishing, have grown in their time on MTN and now employ digital recording and editing equipment; others remain crude, marred by inferior sound quality and grainy video. Truth be told, MTN programs are sometimes mind-numbingly dull or appallingly wrong-headed. But by turns, they are also fascinating, absurd, amusing, and unpredictable. Just like reality. And in the year of Reality TV, resembling reality ought to count for something.
Readers' Choice: KARE-11 BEST ART CINEMA U Film Society
Whether or not U Film goes along with Oak Street Cinema's recent proposal to merge the two organizations (don't ask Al Milgrom for more details), the fact remains that much of what it gave us during the past 12 months was both indispensable and very much in keeping with its longstanding mission to disregard the bottom line. In fact, this may have been U Film's strongest year of programming in a decade; certainly, there was a period between early last summer and late last fall when it seemed to do no wrong. There was the Belgian neorealist masterpiece Rosetta; the gorgeous African animated film Kirikou and the Sorceress; the searing postapartheid doc Long Night's Journey Into Day; the sprawling "Sound Unseen" series of music-related movies; two modern-day classics by Israeli director Amos Gitaï, Kadosh and Kippur; Lars von Trier's outrageously reflexive The Idiots (and its making-of addendum The Humiliated); and an "Iranian Film Week" that, despite being hastily assembled, gave us the Cities' one and only screening of Abbas Kiarostami's magnificent film The Wind Will Carry Us. So: With all this, plus expansive series of Cuban, Jewish, and queer cinema (not to mention another massive Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival), does U Film really need rescuing? In the spirit of foreign art-film ambiguity (not to mention Al Milgrom), that question shall remain--at least for the moment--unanswered.
BEST FILM I Hate Babysitting!
Easily the most accomplished (and the funniest) local feature to come down the pike since Driver 23, this fiendishly creative, girl-centered coming-of-age farce by writer-producer-director Tara Spartz begins with a borderline obscene vignette linking babysitting to prostitution and just builds from there. Drawn from Spartz's own experiences looking after little brats for insultingly low pay, I Hate Babysitting! (which premiered in March as part of the Walker's "Women With Vision" series) is a classic comedy of adolescent pain and humiliation, awash in bodily fluids and set, appropriately, during the ass-end of summer vacation in lovely suburban Coon Rapids. Struggling to save for back-to-school clothes on a part-time baby sitter's budget, and desperate to attend her best friend Crystal's first kegger despite Mom's fierce objections, our endlessly put-upon heroine Brigit (Amanda Benolkin) suffers her own private hell with truly Minnesotan stoicism...up to a point. Spartz, an Arts High School and MCTC grad whose earlier "Balls Out!" gave a good hint of her talent, achieves nearly everything she attempts here. Her superb direction of actors young and old is clearly rooted in her firsthand knowledge of the milieu. Her astute camera placement (Kevin Smith, eat your heart out!) flaunts her innate feel for the front yard, the front seat, the public swimming pool, and the basement rec room. Her characters, even the minor ones, are believably eccentric (the near-catatonic "Grammy" is a particular riot). And the hilariously vulgar dialogue remains simultaneously true to age, gender, and region. I Hate Babysitting! is scheduled to screen twice more at the Heights Theater on June 7; find a baby sitter, if you must, and go.
BEST STAGE PRODUCTION American Safari
Jacques Lecoq, Jacques Lecoq--sometimes it doesn't seem like a week goes by that we don't hear about another theater taking its inspiration from this French educator. Who would have expected he would have so profound an influence on the Twin Cities? But in the world of physical theater, there is another influence of equal note: Etienne Decroux, who taught that most despised of disciplines, mime. Yet if we steer clear of those dreaded street performers with their imaginary boxes and striped shirts, we stumble across something quite interesting. Decroux's school of "Dramatic Corporal Mime" brought an intensity of focus to movement that had previously existed only in dance. Kari Margolis and Tony Brown, students of Decroux and founders of the Margolis Brown Company, seem to pop their heads up locally only once or twice each year, but when they do, it is always a joy. The couple shares a preoccupation with the kitschy detritus of American pop culture that feels somehow very Minneapolitan (one imagines them scavenging for hours at thrift shops). They laid this obsession bare in American Safari, their most recent touring production. Brown performed as a hapless Everyman lost in a world of suburban iconography, where everything from lawn barbecues to animatronic characters at Disneyland carries bizarre, disheartening messages. Brown has a considerable comic stage presence. This newspaper compared him to comedian and song-and-dance man Danny Kaye, but having seen Jacques Tati's Playtime once again, we will say that he is also like Tati. Both men are amiable but utterly lost in the modern world, and therefore subject to constant physical mishaps. As with Tati, the results are funny, yes, but also strangely melancholy, as though moments of desperate panic, sorrow, and bewilderment were being replayed as slapstick.
BEST ACTOR Stephen D'Ambrose
D'Ambrose is unavoidable--regular theatergoers are liable to see him onstage a half-dozen times per year in an amazing variety of venues. This past year, the lanky, wry performer has graced the stage of the Park Square Theatre, the Loring Playhouse, the Mixed Blood Theatre, and, most notably, the Jungle Theater. D'Ambrose's role there was in a production called The Pavilion, essentially a sweet two-character romance about former lovers rooting through their pasts at a high school reunion. D'Ambrose narrated the story, as well as playing any incidental character that was needed, regardless of gender. This offered him an opportunity to dazzle, racing across the stage to switch, sometimes in midsentence, from a stoned city mayor to a bitter, chain-smoking divorcée--all accomplished by nothing more elaborate than a shift in posture and vocal tone. But he is also an actor with quiet authority, which is why, despite his comic chops, he is often cast in roles like Mr. Frank in the Park Square production of The Diary of Anne Frank. This is a part that is both underwritten and saintly, and D'Ambrose brought to it a hollowness of expression and gravity of bearing that suggested a man shattered by the Holocaust--a great, tragic performance in a play that is written more like a situation comedy.
BEST ACTRESS Jaidee Forman
The Theatre de la Jeune Lune and the 15 Head companies don't share an aesthetic, exactly, but when performers from one company show up on the stage of another, it isn't at all surprising. Both companies are meticulously, and often comically, physical. Both companies seem to enjoy creating radical new versions of classic, and sometimes forgotten, plays. Both companies are often wildly experimental and seem to thrive on collaboration. But when Jaidee Forman took the stage in the recent remounting of Jeune Lune's The Green Bird, her presence felt inevitable. An artistic associate with 15 Head, Forman has appeared in virtually every performance by the company, worked on script development, designed costumes, and choreographed the company's complex physical language. But it is as an actress that Forman has really distinguished herself. One can scarcely imagine another local performer who could move between the grotesque, lowbrow comic characterization that Forman brought to Green Bird and the stylized, elegant, intellectually dense approach she devoted to the depiction of Coco Chanel in an original one-woman show, Coco. Forman seemed exactly right performing for the Jeune Lune; a month later, performing for 15 Head, she seemed exactly right again.
BEST DIRECTOR Andrew Kim
In two productions this past year, Andrew Kim has demonstrated himself to be in possession of a rare quality in theater: an evolving, original directorial vision. Both City Rhapsody at In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre and Passage at Intermedia Arts (co-produced by Theater Mu) were daring, multidisciplinary works. Now, we hesitate to recommend anything saddled with the awkward term multidisciplinary, as the results are often a puzzling mélange of angular modern dance and affected scenery chewing. Kim, by contrast, draws from complementary disciplines: Passage found inspiration in both the masked performances of Korean theater and the physical theater of French mime, while City Rhapsody wedded the visual poetry of stage designer Duane Tougas to the more literal spoken-word poetry of Thien-Bao Phi. Both productions drew additional inspiration from elaborate, collective improvisations by the cast. The result: a variety of onstage tableaux that were sometimes wildly comic (enraged, inarticulate squirrels chattering furiously at the audience) and sometimes profoundly beautiful (a dying man rushing toward his daughter, tearing through a long sheet of white fabric as he did so). Kim is clearly experimenting with an enormous imagination and a wide variety of theatrical devices. What is astonishing is that his experimentation, when it reaches the stage, feels necessary, logical, and complete.
BEST THEATER FOR NEW WORK The Playwrights' Center
We're talking really new work here. The ink may have dried on the pages of the scripts that rotate through the Playwrights' Center's various educational programs and workshops, but the photocopies are still warm and smell of toner. A random sampling of one week in the center's calendar reveals two staged readings of new plays (Trans State by James Livingston and Kinnickinnic by Mark Kahrau), a fireside chat with such seasoned playwrights as Julie Jensen, Jeffrey Hatcher, Buffy Sedlachek, and Laurie Carlos, and also Nautilus Music Theater's Rough Cuts, a presentation of music theater works in progress--all free to the public. Chances are, if a play is going to wind up onstage in the Twin Cities, it will get its start at the Playwrights' Center. Here is your chance to see it first.
BEST THEATER FOR COMEDY Acadia Café and Cabaret
Comedy is pretty mobile in the Twin Cities. Let us take as an example comedian/storyteller Ari Hoptman, who has in the past year performed at the Bryant-Lake Bowl, Intermedia Arts, the Phoenix Playhouse, a Minneapolis church, and Berlin. One suspects that if there were no venue at all, Hoptman would simply take a soapbox to Powderhorn Park, stand atop it, and begin shouting his monologues at passersby. As ambulatory as local comedy may be, however, there is one venue that the funny stuff keeps coming back to: The Acadia Café and Cabaret. This place has seen Hoptman onstage twice in the past few months, as well as providing a monthly home to the subversive sketch and improv comedy of the Scrimshaw Brothers. Additionally, the Acadia is the regular haunt of the Brave New Institute-trained Velvet Elvises, for our money the best local troupe working in the long-form improv style known as the Harold.
BEST THEATER FOR DRAMA Mixed Blood Theatre
Do we take this quarter-century-old theater for granted? We do, don't we? Nowadays, when directors frequently cast plays without regard to color (and sometimes gender), and when most local theater companies produce several plays per season that tell stories of diverse ethnic and cultural experiences, it is easy to forget how radical the Mixed Blood was when it first opened in 1976. Mixed Blood expanded the palate of local theatergoers, helping to create a performance scene in which diversity is not just welcome but expected. And all that would be well and good--hooray for history and all that--except for the fact that the Mixed Blood stubbornly refuses to become a historical anachronism. They still produce some of the most inventive plays offered in the Twin Cities. Because as diverse as we think we are, and as proud as we might become of having a hundred theater companies who all carry the word diversity in their mission statements, there are still stories that are not getting told, and the Mixed Blood has a keen way of finding them. Let us point to a few examples from recent seasons. Consider Zaraawar Mistry's adaptation of Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories, a production that drew heavily from the long tradition of oral storytelling found in the Arab world, but also offered a complex parable for Rushdie's own experience of living underground. Or the recent co-production of Rebecca Gilman's Spinning Into Butter, which told of a Vermont college torn apart by a single incident of racism. Or last year's Cut Flowers, which marked the playwriting debut of actor Gavin Lawrence. The play's setting inside a fancy floral shop provided unexpected rhythms--the patter of the urban black experience suddenly set to the constant chopping and binding of fresh flowers. Who else is telling this story? Nobody.
BEST INDEPENDENT THEATER 15 Head: A Theatre Lab
15 Head productions can sometimes be cold: Most of the performers in the company's staging of The Insatiate Countess wore their faces frozen in masklike expressions and moved with near-clinical calculation. So this is not theater oriented toward audiences looking for the experience that Aristotle, bless his critical soul, labeled catharsis: the process of seeing emotions acted out onstage, ridding the spectator of these passions. Likewise, 15 Head does not seem to bother itself with rich characterization. Instead, the company's performers often seem dreamlike and speak their dialogue in an unforced, deadpan manner. 15 Head defy logical staging, preferring an abstraction of motion that is often more painterly than theatrical. This can be challenging for the unprepared. Those who attended a recent production of Coco expecting a lucid biography of fashion designer Coco Chanel were instead treated to a one-woman show in which the text was apparently created by cutting up passages from Chanel biographies, along with clips from fashion magazines of the Forties, and quotes from Chanel herself, placing these scraps into a hat, and then pulling them out at random. Oh, but there is art to it--great art, which revealed itself in the theater's painstaking attention to detail, their rigorously intellectual approach to their subjects, and the sheer beauty often evident in their productions. When something this brainy and skilled frustrates, it does so with a purpose: It is the frustration of the unexpected, and that feeling fast gives way to delight.
BEST LOCAL IMPRESARIO Dean J. Seal
The Minnesota Fringe Festival continues to grow like that pinkish gelatin that terrorized Steve McQueen in The Blob: This past year's festival featured 104 shows in 17 different venues, seeping through the walls and floorboards of every possible performing surface (including some decidedly unexpected venues, such as basements and the back seats of cars). Total attendance: 24,349, making our festival the second-best-attended in the United States, and offering programs as varied as a film series, standup comedy, musical revues, and naked people cavorting about onstage. All this comes from the stewardship of Dean J. Seal, himself a product of small performing venues and upstart theatrics. Local fans of novelty a cappella groups (you know who you are) will remember Dean from Mr. Elk and Mr. Seal, and might even spontaneously start humming a Japanese rendition of "La Bamba." This year's festival promises to be even bigger, despite repeated attempts by Steve McQueen to freeze the whole thing with fire extinguishers. Dean J. Seal's monstrous creature continues to grow! Will nothing stop it? Will it consume us all?!
BEST OPERA Street Scene
A few years back the Houston Grand Opera put its production of Kurt Weill's Street Scene up for sale. The folks over at the Minnesota Opera, who had long wanted to perform the piece, couldn't have been more delighted and quickly snapped up the sets and costumes. The production staff restored the exquisitely detailed four-story sets, and in February the company premiered its own staging of the work--a new addition to its permanent repertoire. Based on Elmer Rice's Pulitzer Prize-winning play and with a libretto by Rice and Langston Hughes, Street Scene depicts a couple of steamy summer days in a 1940s New York tenement. This place teems with stories of unrequited love, adultery, even murder. The work is part opera, part Broadway musical, and the Minnesota Opera's production made the most of both--from conductor Rob Fisher's grasp of Weill's sweeping score to Jill Slyter and Tony Vierling's show-stopping Act I dance number. Talented local performers anchored the production: Elisabeth Comeaux gave a poignant portrayal of Rose Maurrant, the girl who feels suffocated by her New York home; and Kimm Julian offered a glimpse into the growing desperation of Rose's cuckolded father, Frank Maurrant. Interestingly, the Minnesota Opera seems on the vanguard of a Street Scene revival: Both the Chicago Lyric Opera and the Pittsburgh Opera plan to mount their own productions in their upcoming seasons.
BEST DANCE PERFORMANCE IN THE PAST 12 MONTHS Cathy Young Dance
Dance is no more philosophical than its legs, to paraphrase the choreographer Merce Cunningham. The synergy between choreographers and dancers is the stuff of which this art form is made, and it was present in abundance throughout Cathy Young's concert last May. The nine performers (including Young) are among the brightest and best on the local scene, and Young created dances that showcased their multifaceted talents. In "Verdance," for instance, Young's husband Chris Aiken improvised a tour-de-force solo. Energy slithered through his body as he channeled the unbridled polyrhythms of some explosive Ur-jazzdance form. The ensemble created riffs on Aiken's phrasing, exuberantly carrying his eccentric motion into the more familiar territory of Broadway rhythms and get-down urban streetdance. Later Young and Aiken performed a starkly sculpted duet in which their dancing poured forth like rich amber light, illuminating every nook of a compelling relationship. The final work on this program, "Night of Many Dreams," presented the image of violent storms raging within and around the performers. The eight dancers embodied Young's vision of a world in turmoil, whipping up an emotional tempest with an intensity approaching Armageddon's. But within the collective tumult, individual dance personalities emerged. For instance, while Christine Maginnis and Dana Holstad tended to pitch headfirst into the maelstrom, the lucid dancing of Aiken and Amy Behm gave Young's dramatic intensity an added dimension of tranquillity.
BEST DANCER Laura Selle
Maybe it's the weather, maybe it's the work ethic, but the Twin Cities are rife with gifted dancers who make competent choreography look good, and good dances look even better. A highlight among highlights is 23-year-old Laura Selle, who currently dances for several of the best choreographers in town. As a dancer, she has the equivalent of perfect pitch. Movement pours out of her as if she were making it up on the spot: Whether jazzing it up or catapulting through space like a force of nature, the athletic Selle makes whatever she dances look totally unaffected. Her robust performing is rock solid but also reveals a vulnerability: She's equally compelling hoisting a man to her chest in a nurturing embrace or devouring the stage like an avenging Fury. Or standing still, an emotional barometer registering the surrounding tumult. When she talks (which she does frequently in the movement-theater works of Matt Jenson and Stuart Pimsler), she speaks the way she dances--directly, without a hint of artifice. An Apollonian dancer in a Dionysian world of increasingly frenzied choreography, Selle embodies the calm at the center of even the most ferocious action.
BEST CHOREOGRAPHER Robin Stiehm
In the 20 years that Robin Stiehm has been dancing, she has assimilated a range of styles from classical ballet to postmodern moves. Her recent choreography compresses and redirects these aesthetics into startlingly original dance images. The four works presented in Stiehm's concert at the Southern Theater in March coalesced into an erotic architecture where meticulously constructed forms throbbed with heat and light. Eric Boone's performance of "In a Room, Gambling" was perhaps the keynote for Stiehm's vision. An intense, androgynous presence, Boone performed a series of enigmatic variations with two other men. But this was not just another dance about sexual do-si-do-ing. In a series of spare, shimmering gestures, Boone seemed to be mining his sensuality and ruminating on its transformative power. The other works on this program also reflected a passionate and clearly focused vision in which there was not a wasted motion or an arbitrary gesture. A women's quartet, "Speak Slow, Abandon Caution," took the dancers on distended forays into space. As in a cubist portrait, parts of their bodies veered radically off center, reconfiguring into vibrant new forms. Yet the dancing was also self-contained, almost austere, as if these women were risking life and limb to achieve absolute clarity. Stiehm's work is abstract in the best sense of that elusive term--emotion contained and transfigured by form.
BEST WRITER AT A LOCAL DAILY Charles Laszewski
"Kaiser carried his shotgun everywhere. Sometimes at night, the priest who jumped out of airplanes, stitched his own leg after a motorcycle accident and stalked caped buffalo, called out in his troubled sleep." So ended the third installment of Pi Press reporter Charles Laszewski's series investigating the death in Kenya last August of Minnesota-bred missionary John Kaiser. The passage, like so many in the weeklong series, concisely captured the essence of the man while foreshadowing his impending crisis. Fueled by seemingly endless details about Kaiser and his life in Kenya--which Laszewski accumulated through dogged interviews and research both here and during a brief trip to Africa--the series effectively drew a backdrop for the events as it built a true page-turning suspense. It's an unfortunate reality that such evocative writing rarely makes it into daily newspapers anymore, owing in part to increasing pressures both to simplify news and to churn out copy. That's why it's all the more refreshing to read work that combines the skill of digging for information with the tender knack for portraying the human condition. Readers' Choice: Jim Walsh BEST MUSIC WEBZINE Exiled on Main Street
If you're a music fan, the information available from the Web's compulsive catalogers can be mighty useful. Sometimes you do need to know every tour date the Minutemen played in 1985, the index numbers for every release on the ESP label, or the guitar tabs for that Yo La Tengo song you keep singing in the shower. But spending too much time on those obsessive sites is like looking at the world through a keyhole: The perspective is seriously skewed. That's why Bill Tuomala's adjunct to his five-year-old print zine (which you can subscribe to through the Web site) is a necessary antidote to this kind of narrowcasting and tunnel vision. Writer, sometime accountant, and full-time music fan, Tuomala is no less enthusiastic than those folks, but his musings on economics, beer, women, Guns N' Roses, beer, poetry, and the Replacements are set in a real, vibrant world. One where your jerky boss ambushes you at the Christmas party, the gals at the liquor store snub you (and you kinda like it), and you're maybe--hell, probably--the oldest guy at the Soul Asylum show. This past issue, #27, is one of his best. It features a brilliant reinvention of Van Halen's career as a critical success and commercial flop ("Legend has it that the Clash themselves...stepped down from their multiplatinum thrones, took one listen to Fair Warning, and scrapped the work that had been done to date on their next album"), and a recounting of a misfired high school crush that's as poignant and truthful as anything High Fidelity's Nick Hornby ever set to print.
BEST ART GALLERY The Waiting Room
Who isn't a sucker for the dingy, illicit feel of an underground art gallery? Who doesn't get a thrill when entering a rehabilitated warehouse space where a flimsy partition hides the possessions of the gallery owners? Where a plywood floor hides the toxic ooze of the previous tenants, and where artists and various malingerers can, on any given Friday, be viewed in their native habitat? All urban artscapes worth their turpentine are replete with such spaces, and in the Twin Cities the current epitome of this archetype is the Waiting Room in northeast Minneapolis. Set in a segment of an old chair factory, the Waiting Room is very easy to miss at first glance (part and parcel of the experience, you might say). The door is tucked in the corner of the sprawling warehouse just behind a loading dock, and the space lacks decent signage or any other indication of the artistic magic to be found inside. (Good luck, too, finding a parking space if the shit-kicker bar next door happens to have a band playing.) But once you do get inside the gallery, you'll be glad you came to see the art: a motley collection of au courant conceptual work by the just-out-of-grad-school set, both local and national. What distinguishes the Waiting Room in the end is the rather high quality of the artwork they have brought in since they opened in September, including local artists Markus Lunkenheimer, Katrina Mitchell, Gerald Smith, and Bruce Tapola, from shows such as "Nothing and Everything," and "Everything Forever and Ever." But really, who looks at the artwork when there's serious mingling to be done, filterless cigs to be smoked, and wine to be drunk out of plastic cups?
BEST NEW ART TREND Invasion of the Young Turks
Much like the fin-de-siècle Ottoman Empire, today's art world is stagnant and unproductive, a victim of the bloated success at the upper echelons (Manhattan's art scene being a distant and inaccessible sultan's palace, so to speak). Fortunately for the Ottomans, a collection of transnational army officers, dubbed the Young Turks, led a successful coup and after 1908 instituted a sweeping program of modernizing reforms. Our dismal local art scene is ripe for just the same sort of updating, so it is fortunate that a new class of brash young artists and gallery owners--Jo Del Pesco, John Corrigan, J. Heikes, Jennifer Murphy--are settling into town just as indicators point the fine-art world toward oblivion. Our Young Turks, like those of yore, come from all over--New Jersey, Delaware, Oregon, Georgia--apparently attracted to the high local standard of living by a sense of adventure, and, perhaps most important, our local sultanate of arts-funding institutions. The past few months things have been looking up in the art scene, as the Young Turks have opened new galleries such as the Waiting Room and the Radiator Art Exhibition Co. In the process, they've reinvigorated the exhibition options for an artist pool eager for new places to show work. We can only hope that our Young Turks stick around longer than the originals, whose ten years of inept rule eventually helped bring about World War I and the dissolution of the Ottoman state.
BEST SINGLE-ARTIST SHOW Shannon Kennedy
The best art effortlessly captures something about the spirit of its age. It does not try to be contemporary; it simply is, by virtue of its timely essence. Shannon Kennedy's October 2000 show at Franklin Art Works, in which she presented "Untitled #3," a single seven-minute video projected in an otherwise empty room, is just such art for our times. Created from sketchy and yellowed handheld-video footage shot by Kennedy in the subway system of New York, "Untitled #3" is an eerily rhapsodic and voyeuristic montage of people moving in a strange underground world. They look at the camera with blank faces, their mouths set hard against the struggle of a long workday. They seem unaware that they are being filmed and appear wholly, devastatingly human because of this lack of awareness. What really matters here is that Kennedy uses the devices of the interactive, interconnected age--in this case, the quick fix of digital video--to get to the heart of the matter in a way that seems wholly unforced and natural. Through the film, Kennedy watches the ebb and flow of modern life as trains arrive and depart and people lumber to and fro, dancing to the soundtrack of industrial clangs and moans. This is reality programming brought to the status of high art, a moving portrayal of the modern condition.
BEST MOVIE THEATER Oak Street Cinema
Our beloved local museum of the moving image went above and beyond its retro roots this past year by playing host to the two greatest films of 2000, Hou Hsiao-hsien's Flowers of Shanghai and Edward Yang's Yi Yi (A One and a Two...)--both from Taiwan, both unspeakably beautiful, and both requiring special care in a culture that too often seems to privilege the known commodity over the lesser-known work of art. To nitpick, the long winter didn't seem to go by any faster with so many extended Oak Street runs of old classics in newly struck prints (e.g., A Hard Day's Night, Gimme Shelter, Ran, Rififi, Raging Bull). And did that dreadful Phish documentary really need to run nine days? But the rest of the programming has been essential: well-timed retros of Kubrick and Antonioni; mini-tributes to Dogme95 and "Saph-o-Rama"; and the embarrassment of riches they called "Out of the Seventies," which, for six weeks in the dead of summer, reminded us of a time when Hollywood movies actually meant something. We also love 'em for giving play to those outrageous genre films from Bollywood and Hong Kong--and for putting Kathryn Bigelow (Strange Days) in the pantheon.
Readers' Choice: Lagoon Cinema BEST OBSCURE MUSEUM The Bakken
As a child growing up in Minneapolis in the 1930s, Earl Bakken was fascinated by electricity. Ensconced in the family garage, he invented all sorts of odd contraptions that relied on battery power to turn levers and cranks, creating bright arcs of light that wowed neighboring kids and his family. But what may have looked like boyhood science fiction eventually became his life's work. In 1949 Bakken co-founded Medtronic, a local manufacturer of medical equipment. And, at the age of 33, he and a University of Minnesota cardiac surgeon developed the first wearable battery-powered pacemaker. Bakken's work kept him busy, but he managed to stick with his favorite hobby of collecting antique medical-electrical devices and all the books and other electricity-related odds and ends he could find. Today the Bakken is home to his collection. Education is the main focus of this museum where visitors can observe electric eels, see the latest in magnetic healing therapies, and turn cranks to generate their own hair-raising jolt. Or, if you really want a scare, head for the new Mary Shelley's Frankenstein exhibit in the spooky rathskeller. If you look carefully at everything, you'll need a couple of hours to get through the whole museum, which is housed in an English Tudor mansion across the street from Lake Calhoun. It's a huge place that could seemingly display considerably more than what is now on view. But according to the Bakken's director David Rhees, there are some things in the museum's collection that are fated never to find their way out of the basement. Among them: eleven electromechanical vibrators dating back to the Victorian era, which doctors used to relieve their "hysterical" female patients. Shocking, indeed.
BEST MUSEUM EXHIBITION "An Acre of Art" at the Minnesota Artists' Gallery
This past fall, the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program (MAEP) mounted "An Acre of Art," an exhibition of the rural-based work of Mark Knierim and Robert Lawrence in the Minnesota Artists' Gallery at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. It was a perfect way to end the year--a spare and elegant exhibition that raised the national hackles of animal-rights protesters, most of whom had never seen the show. And while said protesters focused on the show's use of live caged chickens, no one could diminish the minimalist beauty of the artist's concept of the rural: a long table holding a line of golden corn, spare video projections of a single row of corn swaying in the wind, a strip of beaten lead mounted on the gallery wall, a gilt-framed chicken cage suspended like a landscape painting. To be sure, this category could go to just about any given show put on by the MAEP, a 24-year-old local institution whose goal has always been to exhibit the best local artists currently at work. In that time, this artist-run program has produced and presented more than 130 exhibitions with the work of living Minnesota artists. The year 2000, for instance, started with the "Foot in the Door Show 2000," an art exhibition open to any and all comers (which attracted more than 1,700 submissions), and ended with the controversial "Acre of Art" show. Here's hoping the MAEP continues to turn heads and fill galleries for another 24 years.
BEST PUBLIC ART PROJECT Lake Street USA
If you spent any time on Lake Street this past summer, you were part of photographer Wing Young Huie's six-mile-long ode to the Twin Cities' most diverse artery. Perhaps you stopped to admire one of the black-and-white photos placed in storefront windows along Lake Street--images of drifters, artists, cowboys, teenagers, mothers, poets, and everyone in between. Maybe you glanced at the larger photos hung on the side of the Great Lakes Center near the corner of Chicago and Lake while driving by. In any case, we were all part of Huie's summa poetica, because it was about all of us: The three-month public exhibition of 600 photos taken over three years constituted a giant mirror held up to Lake Street's many faces. It reflected a graceful appreciation of our city's changing present with a message that was beautifully simple: Keep your eyes open.
BEST MUSEUM The Minnesota Historical Society History Center Museum
The Minnesota Historical Society is a wise old uncle of a museum, sitting on the back porch watching the world pass by. After all, the society, which predates Minnesota's acceptance into the Union by a good nine years, has pretty much seen it all--from fur trappers and log rollers to railroad barons and rim cities. Today the Minnesota Historical Society History Center Museum--a block-size complex completed in 1992 and situated between the architectural landmarks of the cathedral and the Capitol--is best understood if you consider that it is not just a museum, but a living resource that stretches through time. Sure, the museum is laden with mildly annoying (and standard-issue) isn't-it-weird-how-they-lived-back-then exhibitions, but the place is more than a sop for class trips. The museum is a repository for history, holding more than 900,000 artifacts and historical items, such as Ann Bancroft's gear from her recent Antarctic adventures, for future exhibitions. It also maintains a massive collection of more than 800,000 books, manuscripts, photos, and the like in its library, and operates a number of historical sites throughout the state. The society produces 20-odd books each year at its press, publishes Minnesota History magazine each month, and maintains an extensive online collection of resources (including a massive catalog of neighborhood photos from around the Cities). Finally, the society organizes innovative special exhibitions--on Minnesota music history, for example--and commissions and purchases new work by local artists. So set yourself down at this old uncle's knee; you're bound to learn something.
Readers' Choice: Science Museum of Minnesota BEST PUBLIC-ACCESS CABLE TV SHOW Polka Party
How to pick just one when there are so many to love? Who knows what you'll find flipping through the channels? The nobrow camp of Joanie Loves Furbies? The tawdry thrills of Thomasina.com? Murky, incomprehensible recordings of poorly written sketch comedy? Wedding videos? That freaky Dr. Sphincter show that pops up now and again? Yes, all this and more, making selecting our favorite cable-access spectacle something like wandering the racks at a thrift store and choosing the best flyaway-collared polyester shirt. But if we must choose, then we choose Polka Party, playing irregularly on MCN (look for it around noon or 1:00 p.m. on most days). There is something irresistible about this show, which features a truly astonishing variety of local and national polka acts (so much polka...how can there be so much polka?). Along with the music comes the robust dancing of dozens of grim performers with thin smiles and thinner hair who somehow manage to seem simultaneously cheerless and vivacious. This is Minnesotan television at its finest, where pleasure is a task to be approached earnestly and seriously, where the song might sing about drinking too much beer but the dancers have clearly drunk too little, where the lead instrument is an accordion and the lead singer warbles out melodies as though keeping in tune were merely an artistically questionable affectation probably best left to pretty girls and choirboys. That old oompah-oompah doesn't have much place in popular music anymore (not since Minnesota's own Andrews Sisters ruled the airwaves, I would wager), and what a pity, as it still makes us want to plaster on our sternest smiles and spin around our loved ones with a quick triple-step. Thanks to Polka Party, we still can.
BEST BOOK BY A LOCAL AUTHOR Packinghouse Daughter
At first blush, Cheri Register's memoir about coming of age during the 1959 strike at Albert Lea's Wilson & Co. meatpacking plant might seem limited in appeal: The events are remote; most of the protagonists have passed on; and the conflict, which left this Minnesota hamlet bitterly divided for decades, is buried in the town's collective memory. Yet Register's far-ranging and richly detailed account of the 109-day strike goes deeper than history. In a blend of vivid reportage, personal reflection, and socioeconomic analysis, Register traces the contours of small-town America, the rise and fall of organized labor in the heartland, and her own family's working-class mythology. Distant though its subject may be for today's urban office worker, Packinghouse Daughter (Minnesota Historical Society Press) makes a deeply felt case for honoring those who, like Albert Lea's meatpackers did a generation ago, build their communities through sweat and muscle. And Register's theme--what is lost in capitalism's cold calculus--hasn't changed much since Minnesota Gov. Orville Freeman, on the night he called in the National Guard to end the strike, jotted this line in his notebook: "What of community? Who can speak for community and people who live there?"
2001 Best of the Twin Cities HOME
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