With more than 100 productions scattered across the city, the Minnesota Fringe Festival is too sprawling to capture in a single take. From a reanimated insult comic to a Shakespeare lottery, here’s a glimpse of what this year’s Fringe has to offer.
Popular 1980s actor Loni Anderson of the hit TV series 'WKRP in Cincinnati' has died
St. Paul native Loni Anderson, who played a struggling radio station’s empowered receptionist Jennifer on the hit TV comedy “WKRP in Cincinnati,” has died.
Clown comedy, climate change on canvas and Mozart outdoors
Art Hounds recommend “Clown Funeral” at Theatre in the Round, “2°C,” a joint exhibit by painters Drevis Hager of Minneapolis and Mark Granlund of Red Wing, and “The Return of King Idomeneo.”
ARTS EVENTS
Sheila E. & the E-Train at The Dakota
Aug. 8 — Sheila E. has been a musical powerhouse since 1977, when she performed on the album “Yesterday's Dreams” by jazz bass guitarist Alphonso Johnson. Since then, she’s gone on to collaborate with Prince, Ringo Starr and Beyoncé, as well as produce a string of genre-busting hits. She is also the second generation of an astonishing musical dynasty: Her father (and frequent collaborator) Pete Escovedo played percussion for Santana, her unclue Javier founded the San Diego punk band The Zeros, her uncle Alejandro founded the San Francisco punk band The Nuns, and on, including Sheila E. having Latin legend Tito Puente as her godfather.
Aug. 9–11 — Making its Minnesota premiere, “The New Seven Deadly Sins” comes to the Crane Theater this weekend. Inspired by the vices identified in Christian theology, this show mixes contemporary song and dance in seven original numbers that represent each sin. The songs were commissioned by the Carnegie Hall Corporation for the iconic Audra McDonald in 2004, written by some of opera and musical theater’s best, including Stephen Flaherty, Lynn Ahrens and Ricky Ian Gordon.
Skylark Opera Theatre offers a fresh take on the infamous sins, pairing evocative choreography by dancers Patrick Jeffrey and Sarah Potvin with the vocals of soprano Bergen Baker. This show channels the allure of the seven deadly sins, revealing the intimacy and power of choice — and of bad behavior — through flexible, genre-bending performance.
Werner Herzog restored documentaries at Trylon Cinema
Aug. 8–10 — Chaos enthusiast and existential German filmmaker Werner Herzog, famous for films like “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” and “Grizzly Man,” also made a slew of 45-minute documentaries in the seventies and eighties for Süddeutscher Rundfunk, a German state broadcasting corporation. Five of those films have been newly restored and will be screened Aug. 8–10 at the Trylon Cinema in Minneapolis. “
With eclectic subject matter ranging from a volcanic eruption in Guadalupe to the frenetic form of speech used by American cattle auctioneers, each story is clearly borne of some deep fascination Herzog has with a person or phenomenon,” writes Malcolm Cooke in a delightful essay for Perisphere, the Trylon’s blog. (Cooke also recounts the “Minnesota Declaration” made by Herzog in 1999 about “Ecstatic Truth” at the Walker Art Center.)
