Cake In 15

A Thought on Torn Advertising Taken Far or Grand Adventures in a New Economy

It is good to have hope, that thing with feathers, as the poet said, and it’s best when it comes as a surprise. Biking down Nicollet back when summer seemed new and endless, before word came down that some Twin Cities cultural hubs were losing their spaces, it was good to see the reappearance of a certain flock of hopeful and forward looking birds, the quickly sketched but effortlessly floating marker work of Aaron Bickner and Andrew Shannon. The flying pigeons, black ink on the whitewashed panels of the building at the southeast corner of Nic & 10th first appeared last summer as part of the supposedly temporary Save Canvas show organized by Overproof, a show using empty retail spaces and found materials.

Even though a year has now passed, the installations in the abandoned retail spaces never were taken down but the shop tableaux were never my favorite part of the project. The birds were just so much more immediate, offering up a simple vision of how to use urban, publicly visible space (a legal and philosophical distinction from public space) in a way that makes the city more livable. This winter, the wall was covered up by a bright-hued ad campaign to visit Montana, wisely chosen to show the verdant mountains and crystalline lakes of Montana in summer, because in winter, Montana makes International Falls look like sunny South Beach. The color, in winter, was a nice mental getaway, but that’s all it was- escapism. The birds were put there by people, artists and organizers and entrepreneurs who live in this city and care about it.

It was the right positioning, too- the building once was the physical home of Let It Be Records, now a mail-order entity and still has the advertising for the failed 10th & Nicollet luxury highrise that followed adorning the top of the window canopies. That corner, for the better part of the decade has stood for collapse and failure, a downtown reminder of the decline of independent retailers, the folly of inflated real estate markets and the ensuing recession. Save Canvas, it felt, was a defiant bird flipped to hard times. When we go broke, when the state of affairs, to cop Dessa’s verse from Low light/Low life, feels like “the flight of the salesman, the death of the bumblebee, nothing left for the attorneys and the tumbleweeds”, when the For Lease signs start becoming more apparent and longer lasting, it is good to have artists move in and take the chance.

Tonight was the last night for the Art of This space on South Nicollet, a space that has hosted a lot of adventuring and risk-taking over the last five years. As the excellently ambient and passionateTake Acre played the last installment of the Tuesday Night Music series in that space, David Petersen, director of the gallery, looked in from outside. He didn’t seem too worried- the music series is moving over to the Open Eye Figure Theatre and hopefully they can get some grant funding to help keep it running, but they have a good deal going for now. The space won’t sit empty- Jake Luck of Leisure Birds and GAYNGS is opening Yeti Records in the storefront on October 16th. A new salon, Honeycomb, has opened next door and word is that Kim Bartmann of Bryant-Lake Bowl, Barbette and the Red Stag has purchased Casey’s, the dive bar on the block. “What would we do here?” Petersen smiled, “We wouldn’t even fit in. We’d be the black sheep.” Plus, now he gets to make his own art, which is ultimately what artists should do, even if running the gallery has been it’s own form of sculptural installation. Not having a space is suddenly freeing again.

The Los Angeles Times Culture Monster blog also ran a story earlier in the year about the non-profit arts entities making big moves in L.A. Alexandra Grant, a member of the board of the Watts House Project had a quote that brings out the best of the times we live in. She said, “It’s such an exciting time for nonprofits. There’s an opportunity to think of these legal entities as a very creative space for people to organize. To think about the relationship between money and creativity and how they’re applied, and how a small nonprofit that’s on the ground can rethink some of the bigger, slow moving boats of culture.” In other words, let’s be birds in flight and not mud-stuck hippos. Local projects like Works Progress, Minneapolis Art on Wheels and even projects of the “slow moving boats of culture” like the Walker Art Center’s Open Field project show a collaborative, survivalist and innovative bent. Joseph Belk, who helped organize Save Canvas, teamed up with printers Burlesque of North America to launch CO Exhibitions. The Art Shanty Project may taking 2011 off, but if it is to better re-organize and re-energize it’s audience, it is for the right reasons. Bedlam Theatre may be losing it’s beloved brick-and-mortar space, but it is fighting on. In fact, they just announced they have a temporary new space to move into, so be there this Friday to blow it all out. Flocking together is what it is about.

Walking back down in the cool summer dusk when the birds first re-appeared on Nicollet, two kids, barely teenagers, had taken over the corner with a fuzzy boombox and, apropos of nothing and a box for tips, were voguing their hearts out to Gaga as bikers rolled past laughing. That’s the feel a city needs to survive- that we can own it’s private and publicly visible spaces, that artists are a critical part of a city’s well-being (a point well-made by MNPlaylist.org’s Alan Berks in blog post titled “I Want Something More Than Money From Minneapolis”) and that life here matters. We all want something more and if we can be fearless enough to street-corner dance, to move our arts organization into the homeless unknown, to risk a new record store, we can have what we want and more. Like it said inside the front door of Art of This, a quote from the poet that is Kermit the Frog, “You are not going to watch the show, you are going to be in the show.” So join in and fly right.

The venerable PBS program NewsHour stopped into Minneapolis to tape a segment on Community Supported Art, the innovative arts-sharing program put together this summer by mnartists.org and Springboard for the Arts. It’s a great look at how successful arts innovation can be in the Twin Cities and makes us really sad that we were broke/slow when they announced the project earlier in the year. Not to fret though, on the success of this run, the CSA program is being doubled in size (no mention of doubling in price, which would bring it up to- yikes- $600 a pop) for the next run, meaning that your winter could be brightened by monthly deliveries from local artists of all kinds. Count us in.

Update: The excellent Mr. Andy Sturdevant informs us that indeed, the price remains the same, $300 a share. If I am reading the Springboard website correctly, even though there will be 18 participating artists, the boxes will still contain works by 3 artists apiece, so each share will get the work of 9 different artists. Count us in and reserve your Fall share for $100 here.

Party Planning from the Other Side or A Fiesta and a Funeral

About a week ago, I was the only press person to show up for an advance screening of the Mexican comedy Nora’s Will at the Parkway Theater in South Minneapolis. Granted, the showing was at 9 o’clock in the morning, a time when most writers are contemplating pillows and mortality, but you had to figure the promise of coffee and breakfast would get some scribes out of bed. (The breakfast was delicious, by the way- watermelon dusted with chili powder and coconut, who knew?) I also recommend going to see a movie at the Parkway; attached to Pepito’s Restaurant, it is a venerable old theater with murals on the walls and couches instead of theater seats for the first couple rows. So I stretched out with a cup of coffee and took in the movie as if I was in the comfort of my own home, only with far better picture and sound.

Made in Mexico in 2008, Nora’s Will won 7 Ariel awards (the Mexican Oscar) and has been making the festival circuit picking up awards and accolades for it’s cast and especially for it’s writer and director Mariana Chenillo. The film (originally titled “Cinco Dias Sin Nora”, literally, “Five Days Without Nora”) tells the story of José, a retiree living in an apartment across the street from his ex-wife, Nora. José, played by Fernando Luján, is an affable sort who has gotten too old for God and lived through too much not to by cynical about it and through Luján’s portrayal is full of winks and sly moments. His ex-wife drives him crazy, but despite that, he never moved away from their facing apartments, where, the opening credits reveal, Nora keeps a pair of binoculars to keep an eye on José. To say it is a complicated relationship is understatement, and the relationship is further complicated when, as the beginning of the movie, Nora commits suicide. The very meticulous planning includes brewing coffee for José and the attending physician and family friend, Dr. Nurko, prepping and leaving detailed instructions for a Passover dinner and arranging for a delivery of meat to José in order to aggravate him into coming over. If this all sounds morbidly funny, it is; Chenillo’s pacing effectively uses the silences of aging to build a touching honesty into what could have been a farce.

As José attempts to get his son Rubén (Ari Brickman) home from vacation so that he can be there for the burial, he is thrown up against the ancient and cantankerous Rabbi Jacowitz (Max Kerlew) who points out the religious dilemma, that with the Passover and Shabbat coming, Nora must be interred immediately- not an option without Rubén- or kept on ice for the duration of the high holidays. This clash of secular and religious provides most of the comedy and tension of the film, as José goes and makes alternative burial arrangements at a Catholic cemetery, orders a bacon, sausage and chorizo pizza for the Rabbi and along with the more passive and obsequious Rubén, fights for a proper burial for Nora, whose suicide dooms her to being interred with thieves and murderers. As the rest of the family rallies around the bickering and sniping (José continuously and dryly points out that Nora is his “ex-wife”) breaks down to the solidarity of tragedy, with Nora doing in death what she could not in life- hold her family together.

Nora’s Will is bolstered too by some excellent supporting roles, including the faithful maid Fabiana (a warm and determined Angelina Peláez) who takes the young Moisés, a Catholic convert to Judaism who is sent over as a Rabbi Jacowitz’s lackey, under her wing. It’s a movie with a sense of sunny cynicism and hope about the imperfect lives we live, and it should be shared. If you can have it all to yourself, that’s great, but bringing someone with you is better. Nora’s Will opens to the public this Friday at the Parkway Theater for a one week engagement.

…that’s what we’ll be wanting to see here soon. If you’re not already doing this, then get on it. Vote for local premier DJ, mid-century modern design aficionado and Mad Men Maddict Jake Rudh to win a walk-on role on the the show. He made a valiant run last year, beating out many period-incorrect haircuts and tie widths, so this is the year to make some silver screen memories for the man. Plus, with a photo like that, who would think he could lose? You can vote every day, so click on this link to AMCTV to make send our man through and send him over the moon.

Perhaps to exorcise all the evil juju that comes along with tearing down a revered musical institution, the Apple Store in Uptown has been hosting a series of national and local acts in their cavernous new space. It also (along with the ever-changing upgrades and new models released by the generally benign but often grouchy reign of Overlord Jobs) gives people a reason to go into the store to drum up business for multi-colored earbuds or rubber bouncy things designed to correct your hand for being a less then perfect antenna. (I kid, please don’t wipe my hard drive by remote.)

Dearling Physique at the Apple Store from CakeIn15 on Vimeo.

All that said, the Apple Store was a contextually weird place for electro-art-dance-insert-hyphen-modifier-here-act Dearling Physique. The architecture of brushed metal and video screens really suited the band well in terms of aesthetic, but for their performance on the 31st it was inescapable that they were performing in a store, which made it stranger than any dark club experience with the band. An in-store is generally a more nonchalant affair but you can’t do nonchalant with Dearling Physique. As the video shows, you go all out, never-surrender dedication to warping tropes of masculinity through theatrics and intense layers of dance, electronically altered guitars and rattling drums. A Dearling Physique show, regardless of whether or not it is in a well-lit retail environment in the middle of the day, is an event and an experience, and that’s what makes it great. You can get more of the event and experience tonight at Hell’s Kitchen as part of the kick-off for frontman Domino, who is heading off to Europe, and the official release of the video for “Sleep and the Heart”, featuring c.a.s. of CakeIn15 (Apple and shameless self-promotion seem to go pretty well together). It all goes down at 8 and is free, so go get your art on and pick up a dance move or two to face down a normative hegemonic system, or for when you’re waiting on the next available “genius”.

It’s The End Of The World As We Know It, (& I Feel Fine) or “Well? Shall we go?” “Yes, let’s go.” They do not move. Curtain.

“They could smell death,” she said as she rolled her cigarette between her fingers. “They smelled death and everyone started tipping big.” She was talking about the regulars of a restaurant that closed, but despite the best efforts of the sunshine and summer breeze, the darkness of the end of times weigh heavy on the crowd on the rooftop patio of the Bedlam Theatre. The Bedlam is about to be evicted and downstairs in the relative cool of the brick bar, another patron sighed, “It feels like the end of a golden age.” It might be, mainly because the old aphorism is true; you don’t know how good you’ve got it ‘til it’s gone. Or in this case, on the way out.

By now you should know the details. The Star Tribune broke the story last week that the Bedlam Theatre, which has occupied a former nightclub space on the West Bank for four years now, was given notice by their landlords that they would have to leave the space by September 7th. Sheila Regan at the Twin Cities Daily Planet expanded that narrative with an excellent history of the Bedlam and what it has meant to the West Bank as a community. Even though the Bedlam is about to lose a physical space, it won’t be going down without a wash of ink and lots of peoples two cents, because opinions and voices are two of the only things that artistic-types have going for us these day. Lord knows it’s not the money or the stable future.

First Bedlam performance, “No Sugar Cookies For Herbert”

It wasn’t originally supposed to feel permanent. Four years ago, Bedlam and it’s merry band of theatre-making, authority-thumbing, romping gypsies and vagabonds were similarly evicted from a basement space and amid much wailing and gnashing of teeth, were steered into an empty building that had seen a string of failed businesses. I remember getting off the lightrail one cold day, maybe in November, and seeing people with hammers going to work on the outside of the run-down red brick building. “Whatcha doing?” “Putting in a theatre.” “Cool.” The concept seemed really simple, just take over a space and make a theatre! It hasn’t been simple at all, but it has been thrilling and rewarding to watch innovation at work. They’ve even made Shakespeare work for them.

Six months after that first encounter, I was auditioning for the first of three of the Bedlam’s 10 Minute Community Play Festivals in which I would participate. That From that first festival, I met the people with whom I would be a part of an indie-rock opera called Idigaragua. We went on to form a company called Lamb Lays with Lion and perform more works at Bedlam. I have done one-off performances there, designed for the space and written reviews of numerous shows that have been performed there. I loved a lot of it, hated some, but was rarely indifferent to what was happening in that space. I owe a lot to the Bedlam company. As it turned from just a theatre into one of the best bar & restaurant combos in town, I have had discussions, fights and feel-good sessions, been uproariously drunk and keenly sober there. Of any space in the Twin Cities, it is one where you can walk in and feel at home, whether you want to sit by yourself or get into it with a stranger. It has character, and it has community.

Bedlam’s fuzzy joyful memories

In fact, Bedlam has been central to creating a “community” on the West Bank. It sometimes feels like a neighborhood where students glide past hipsters ignoring the Somali immigrant population, all parties willfully oblivious to eachother. The Bedlam, especially through its work with the youth at the Brian Coyle Center, has made the space to change that and to bring these groups into dialogue. Bedlam has translated a fundamental tenet of theatre, that communication of personal narrative is a social force, and empowered communities and tribes in need of a voice. Fortunately this progress will not be lost, as the Mixed Blood Theatre just down the street (who own their building lock & stock) will be carrying on that community and youth based work. It only makes sense, as their stated mission is to be “dedicated to the spirit of Dr. King’s dream.”

Despite that continuation, it would be a great loss to the neighborhood, to theatre-folk, to artists, musicians and foodies, to passersby and to Minneapolis as a whole if these instigators and rabble-rousers go. Permanence may be antithetical to the revolutionary spirit, but Bedlam never let itself get bored in their space, and never bored us either. So let the mayor know that. Tell him that whether it’s through tax-breaks, real-estate incentives or good old fashioned politicking, Minneapolis needs the Bedlam’s innovative force. We should not let this go quietly, without a fight or at least a damn good party. Down in the bar, a board member was taking a distinctly different view then that of the end of days. “The moment they say so,” she grinned, “I’m ready to start a capital campaign.” She was ready to go, so let’s tip big, kick up our heels and move on to the next big change.

Spread the word! Save the Bedlam!

So yeah, there’s a lot of freaking out about First Avenue painting over (temporarily!) the stars on the outside of the building.  The venue is moving from 530ish stars to closer to 400.  You can even go to their website here and vote for some possible new stars to be added to the wall.

With everyone freaking out, we thought we’d see who should go – hell, I haven’t even heard of some of these bands.  Since the stars were added 10 years ago, shouldn’t it be all about who stands the test of time?  Who’s still awesome & rockin (even if we may not agree on if it’s good or bad)?

Well, here’s a debatable list of who we think should get the heave-ho.  You’ll have to check out the entire list over at the Onion’s AV Club Twin Cities to see if you agree.

ADDA – is this a band?  Attention Deficit Disorder Association?  What?
Alan Freed
Alex Jarvis
Alexander O’Neil
Babylon Pink
Back - Beck, maybe?  That’d make sense to me.
Big Black
Big Head Todd & The Monsters – meh. I liked that one song in the mid-90s, but what have you done for me lately Big Head Todd?
Bionic
Bis
Biz Markie - This is admittedly a tough one, but after that commercial for Radio Shack…
Black Eyed Peas – meh.
Bottom - Some metal band. Which is cool. But do they warrant a star?
Cee Bee
Chi Chi LaRue – Where’s the love for RuPaul, hmmmm?
Chris Bliss - World’s Most Famous Juggler. If it was the World’s Most Famous JuggaLO.. maybe.
Cornelius – Big in 1991…. not so much since.
Corrosion Of Conformity – Metal band. Not playing together… or maybe are sort of according to their website.
Dj Apollo, DJ Echo, DJ ESP,  DJ Jennifer, DJ Mia, DJ S. Supreme, DJ Smitty – Now, I’m admittedly not good at the DJ thing, so more than likely some of these deserve to be here.  Some prolly don’t though.  Best 4 out of 7?
DMX - I can think of other rappers who deserve this wall more. Doomtree, anyone?
Dragnet -The first thing that comes up on Google is the theme music for the TV show, not this band.
Drive Like Jehu
Drone
Dumpster Juice – I just really hate this band name.
Dutch Oven
Dwight Tilley Band
Eric Burden - Can we just put The Animals up instead?
Face To Face – Too many other good punk bands out there.
Fine Art
Fingerprintz
Firehose - Maybe pick one.  Minutemen or Firehose?  I’m voting Minutemen.
Francisco
Fresco
Golden Palominos
Grandma Flash
H Mhoon
Hammerhead
Heater
Jack Meyers
James Orndorf
Jezus Juice – Ever since the Michael Jackson trial…
Karl Who?
Kindergarten
Kristin Hersh
Lady Luck – Just go check out their promo photo.
Lagbaja
Laughing Stock
Linton Kwest Johnson – Seems like a super cool guy & all… but does he still need a star?
Man Sized Action -2 records in the early 80s produced by Bob Mould.  Mould’s prolly on the wall three times between his solo work, Husker Du & Sugar, but that doesn’t mean this band should be up there.
MC Millenium
Menudo – We’re sorta over them.
Mighty Mighty – Bosstones?
Molly McManus
Monster Magnet - Maybe this is an awesome band.  Methinks not. I do, however, like their name.
Nina Hagen – Seems like a super cool chic, but what has she done for First Ave?
NNB
O’Connor
PD Spin Love
Penkut
Perfect
Pete Raz
Pop Top
Poster Children
Poster Pal
Powermad
Randy Hawkins
Rank Strangers
Redd Kross
Rita Marley – Bob’s widow has her own star?
Ron A
Ronnie Spector – Love the Ronettes, but she can probably be taken down now.
Sharin’ Beats
Sheryl Crow - Oh Sheryl Crow, how I loathe thee…
Snakefinger
Squirrel Nut Zippers – Love these guys, but until 2010 their last album was in the late 90s and they haven’t been to 1st Ave since.  Buh-bye.
Steve Egsgaard - Is this dude’s name even spelled right?
Super Hun
Suzane Vega – Tom’s diner haunted my childhood as did “My name is puka, I puked on the 2nd floor…” Yeah, I was in jr. high.
Syd Straw
Teratism
The Clams – Is this the tribute band?  Veto those please.
The Jim Rose Circus – Maybe it was cool in 1992… and pretty much only in 1992. A novelty act that only stuck around a few years at best. Although who didn’t like The Amazing Mister Lifto?
The Maroons
The Morrells – mmm… mushrooms
The Odd
The Overtones
The Raybeats
The Squabs
The Super Rail Band
The Verve - Yeah I love Bittersweet Symphony too, but mostly because of that Rolling Stones riff.  So they had one huge hit… that they ripped off from a band much better than they would ever be.
Timbuktu
Tom Arnold – Really?  Just, really?
Tony Paul
Tricky – Now, if this was for the Run D.M.C. song…
TSOL
U2 - Like they need a star anywhere.  They could just buy a real one.
WIB
White Zombie
Whole Lotta Loves
X Cops – You already have GWAR up there… and they haven’t played since 1996…
Zartan

So, what do YOU think?

CakeIn15 is happy to announce the next in the series of shows at The Cake Shop. We are proud to host an intimate acoustic evening with the beautiful arrangements of Dark Dark Dark and multi-instrumentalist songwriter Elephant Micah on Thursday, June 17th at 7pm. Dark Dark Dark recently released their acclaimed Bright Bright Bright EP, that featured a cover of Elephant Micah’s “Wild Goose Chase” as the closing track, and it will be a treat to host these friends in the cozy environs of The Cake Shop.

This concert will be limited in capacity, so reserve your space today. Reservation cost is $10, and to reserve space, please log into PayPal and send your payment to CakeIn15@gmail.com. Please mark your payment as a “GIFT” in order to avoid PayPal fees. This is money going to the artists, so please don’t short-change them!

Your reservation to this special show is confirmed ONLY when you receive an email both confirming your payment and giving you the house address. This email must come from CakeIn15@gmail.com and NOT Paypal (so make sure to check your spam filter). Guests are invited to bring a beverage of their choice to enjoy.

When: Thursday, June 17, 2010
Time: 7pm doors, 7:30 show
Where: The Cake Shop, location upon RSVP
How much: $10 reservations

The Cake Shop is dedicated to providing artists and audiences with a unique and intimate experience that allows artists to freely experiment with new material. Shows at The Cake Shop directly financially support the musicians playing. Previous performances at The Cake Shop include Pezzettino, Roma Di Luna, Jeremy Messersmith, The Pines and Chastity Brown.

CakeIn15.com is dedicated to covering and supporting culture issues of importance to the Twin Cities- local music, art, fashion and theater as well as national acts. After all, we do live here.

2009 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Futurism, the Italian avant-garde movement dedicated to breaking brutally away from the past and into a high-speed mechanical and industrial future. 2010 makes it 85 years since Sergei Eisenstein, the visionary Russian film director, released The Battleship Potemkin, a work that revolutionized film by the use of montage and served as fantastic propaganda for the newly installed Bolshevik state. It is not necessary to know things like this while sitting in the audience for Theatre Novi Most’s production of M2: Mayakovsky & Marinetti, now at the Open Eye Figure Theatre, but it does help to inform a clear vision through the furious and flickering layers of text and action on stage.

M2, as director Lisa Channer points out at the beginning of the play, is a fiction, but it is a historical fiction. Vladimir Mayakovsky (Vladimir Rovinsky, who also wrote and co-directed the play) was a Russian Bolshevik, born in 1893 who became a poet whilst doing hard time in Moscow’s Butyrki Prison. Filippo T. Marinetti (Stephen Pearce) was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1876 and was well-educated and worked in literary circles before publishing the “Manifeste de Futurisme” in Paris’ Le Figaro newspaper on February 20th, 1909. The two men only met once, in 1914, and there is no record of that meeting, so the scenario of M2, with Mayakovsky and Marinetti bouncing ideas off eachother, acting as provocateurs and fighting over a woman (Lilya Brik, played lithely and sensually by Julianna Drajko) is an imaginary conceit. These were two important artistic figures of the early 20th century though, and they were both caught up in the major political movements of their time, Bolshevism in Russia and Fascism in Italy, and so their stories are well worth exploring at a time when we more quietly and subtly are engaged in warfare and technological advancement.

What is most impressive about M2 is how Theatre Novi Most captures the kinetic and chaotic time period with full blooded, impeccably constructed performances. Rovinsky and Pearce form a spinning dynamo, pushing eachother louder, faster and more avant-garde in English, Russian and French, as poetry snippets and selections from Eisenstein flicker around them. They embody the deadly earnest faith in the machine future, that everything is better that is faster, stronger and more precise. They push their every masculine instinct to the fore- desire for newness, war, lust all comes up with a heaving sense of potential and seduction. With a cast rounded out by Billy Mullaney and Sasha Gibbs, two talented U of M undergrads and exceptional sound design by Daniel Dukich that heightens the explosiveness of every scene, M2’s ambitiously kinetic conceit may not always by conceptually clear, but it is compelling to see.

“Charge of the Lancers”, Umberto Boccioni 1882-1992

As the delirious actions of the first half of the play come crashing into the realities of the First World War and the Futurist beliefs, the ahistorical flurry of activity and imaginary construct is generally abandoned in favor of a more direct telling of Mayakovsky’s increasingly depressed life as a poet apparatchik in the new Bolshevik regime. In 1915 Marinetti published a book of poems titled “War Is The Only Hygiene Of The World”, and the program notes remark of the Futurists desire for warfare and “scorn for women” that, “Politically, it’s hard to reconcile them with our notions of art and poetry.” This is true, that decline of the avant-garde into functionary roles and acceptance of totalitarian regimes is a cautionary tale, told by Mayakosky, even if earlier he and Marinetti were a seductive vision. Both writers were dismissed by their leaders, with a particularly caustic quote from Lenin appearing on the screen calling Mayakovsky only fit for eccentrics, but the truly disturbing end is how complicit both men were in their own fate, and how the blinkered view of the future can easily be dominated.

M2 is an impressive piece of work from the new company, Theatre Novi Most, even if with all the action happening, it could be textually impenetrable at times. It sets up expectations for their next project, Old Story, a telling of the Gilgamesh myth at The Southern Theatre September 24-October 3. With many of the same performers as well as local luminaries like Barbara Berlovitz and Vanessa Voskuil on stage and a text by Kira Obolensky, if they can maintain the dynamism and focus of M2, Old Story should rock the ancient world.

Last performances Saturday 5/22/2010 at 8pm and Sunday 5/23/2010 at 2pm at Open Eye Figure Theater.

By now, I am sure that with the great American marketing mechanism- word of mouth buzz- you have heard that Pepsi is giving away a bunch of money with their “Refresh Everything Challenge” to fund various arts, cultural and political proposals. As always, need is greater than resources and since television and marketing based competitions seem to be the last bastion of pure democracy (all you need is an idea and people!) here is something we think worth voting for: MNfashion has a proposal in for a $50K grant to fund a sewing co-op that would provide jobs, resources and support to local designers. We’ve written about this before, when we posted about MNfashion’s member drive, and when I interviewed Executive Director Anna Lee about Voltage two years ago for The Onion, it was something that she brought up then. So they need your vote- the top ten proposals in that category get funding and as of this writing, MNfashion ranks 174th. Daunting, yes, but no-one gave an untested Illinois senator good odds before the Iowa caucuses, and it’s just so much fun to be the underdog. Minneapolis likes to surprise you like that. Go vote here, and vote everyday until May 31st.

Also, if you are Art-a-Whirling this weekend, swing by the MNfashion space in the Grain Belt Bottling Building on 13th and Marshall. Not only can you vote from their computer there, but you can also check out Staciaann’s awesome photographs up on the wall, as she is an official MNfashion photog. Double win!

Also, again about the Refresh Everything Challenge, there are multiple winners in all categories and a number of local entries, so look around and find stuff to vote for. Since we pay for the companies to exist, we should be getting something back other than dentist’s visits.