Reserve tickets for Mrs. Charles and Archival Revival right now!
Archival Revival will run May 4, 8, 9, 11, and 14th at 7:30pm at the Nimbus Theatre, in rep with our mainstage production, Mrs. Charles, an historical romance set from 1878-1923 in Minneapolis.
Freshwater Theatre wants you to take that trip back in time with us this spring!
Presenting six multi-disciplinary performances inspired by selected newspaper articles and sheet music from the same period of Minnesota History, Freshwater Theatre is traveling back in time to the early days of the Twin Cities.
Archival Revival will feature:
Mrs Housel: A Suicide Suite from Devious Mechanics
Featuring Kelly Houlehan with accompaniment from Keith Hovis and Peter Hanson
Meet Mrs. Housel. A woman who’s every move was chronicled and ridiculed in the society pages of the Saint Paul Daily Globe. Ten minutes ago she tried to commit suicide. Three minutes from now she’ll try again. But in the space between she contemplates a time when Minnesota was fighting for equal rights, the nation was recovering from a recession and the news walked a fine line between fact and fiction.
Mrs Housel: A Suicide Suite from Devious Mechanics
Featuring Kelly Houlehan with accompaniment from Keith Hovis and Peter Hanson
Meet Mrs. Housel. A woman who’s every move was chronicled and ridiculed in the society pages of the Saint Paul Daily Globe. Ten minutes ago she tried to commit suicide. Three minutes from now she’ll try again. But in the space between she contemplates a time when Minnesota was fighting for equal rights, the nation was recovering from a recession and the news walked a fine line between fact and fiction.
Started by playwright/musician Keith Hovis, Devious Mechanics is a budding collaborative that seeks to present new works – plays, musicals and cabarets – featuring original music. Their first show, Teenage Misery: A Horror Musical was a sleeper hit at the 2013 Fringe Festival and this summer they will debut a brand new – currently untitled – musical at the 2014 Fringe Festival.
Backstage at the Bijou Opera House from Standing Like Lloyd
The present-day Twin Cities metro area continues to evolve as a welcome place for the theatrically-inclined, and its recent history is familiar. Wandering farther back into the past, Backstage at the Bijou Opera House offers a glance at the variety of entertainment this Washington Avenue theatre provided to Minneapolitans over one hundred years ago.
Standing Like Lloyd is the Morrissey family looking at the world, as the illustration suggests, from a slightly askew angle. We may best be described by taking a quick look at what is on our refrigerator: the Thanksgiving turkey from the Star Tribune, lovingly colored by a grownup person; a quote from North Carolina governor Pat McCrory, telling his citizens to prepare for winter weather in February 2014, “Don’t put your stupid hat on at this point in time,”; Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer; a photo of Ari the German Shepherd with a fortune cookie fortune clipped to it, “You will soon witness a miracle,”; the giant paper monthly calendar with the date to order the new Nancy Drew computer game; Plato’s quote, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle,”; a Daily Extra fun fact from the back of the FailBlog daily calendar, “On March 25, 1939, Billboard magazine introduces a chart for hillbilly music. The genre title will change to ‘country’ in the 1940s.” We may or may not be holding scissors.
Fire! Fire! Fire! by Nathan Schilz, directed by Mel Day
Featuring: Shalee Mae Coleman, Mercedes Plendl, Jacob Paul Miller, Puck Matz and Jacob Mack
Fire! Fire! Fire! is a raucous 19th Century proto-karaoke vignette. When four friends get a little tipsy, they decide to reminisce in song about an explosive tragedy. It’s a powder keg of fun!
Nathan Schilz is excited to join Freshwater Theatre for this adventure in history! When not harmonizing explosions, Schilz finds himself as the founder and artistic director of Studio Alethea Productions [“Nightmare Man” (Fringe 2011) and “Kafkaesque: a Musical Metamorphosis” (Fringe 2012)], which will produce its first full-length musical “American Nightmare: The Trials of Jeffrey Dahmer” in Fall 2014. In the past Nathan has composed for film with over forty films to his credit. Currently, he is active in the Twin Cities as a sound designer working with We Theater, Ashland Productions, Mixed Blood Theatre Company, Southwest High School, and Trollwood Performing Arts School (Moorhead).
Viola Worthy and the 1906 Vermin Incursion from Theater
BricolageTurned away by her appeal to the Board of the Minneapolis Women’s Society of Good Works, Viola Worthy must find ways to defend her home and her chicken coop against hordes of viscious, vampire rats. To what lengths will one woman go to protect her flock?
Theater Bricolage creates stories from scraps and snippits, for in the ephemera of life lie clues to the human heart. Tinne Rosenmeier is a theater artist, dance and drama educator, and bricoleuse. She studied acting at the National Shakespeare Conservatory under James Tripp, Mario Siletti, Joanie Evans and Faye Simpson. Tinne was most recently seen as Bernarda Alba in the 2010 production of The House of Bernarda Alba produced by Pangea World Theater and Teatro del Pueblo and directed by Laurie Carlos. Other roles include Tamera in Titus Andronicus at The Basic Theater, and Marmee in Little Women, the national tour by TheaterworksUSA.
Minnesota Fire and Matrimony from Tangleroot Endeavors
Featuring Kira Pontiff and Alyssa Perau, written by Eli Effinger-Weintraub
In 1920, enterprising University of Minnesota student Rose Feigelman started selling spinsterhood insurance to protect women against the indignities of being unmarried by age 35. Thank goodness we’ve come so far since then…haven’t we?
Featuring Kira Pontiff and Alyssa Perau, written by Eli Effinger-Weintraub
In 1920, enterprising University of Minnesota student Rose Feigelman started selling spinsterhood insurance to protect women against the indignities of being unmarried by age 35. Thank goodness we’ve come so far since then…haven’t we?
Tangleroot Endeavors is a labor of love of the wife-and-wife team of Leora and Eli Effinger-Weintraub. Past endeavors include Brittle Things at the 2013 Minnesota Fringe Festival and the photo essay Giggly. Leora and Eli are delighted to welcome Kira Pontiff and Alyssa Perau for “Minnesota Fire and Matrimony.” Catch us at https://www.facebook.com/tanglerootendeavors .Dig Yourself from Paper Soul
Written & Performed by J. Merrill Motz
Shortly after midnight, November 6, 1899, in the Maple Hill Cemetery of Nordeast Minneapolis. Ida Olsen claims she saw something, “a white object, a bearded man with horns”, rise from a grave, and approach her. A holy man is needed for the gathered posse, but the closest they can find that time of night is The Right Reverend Kavanaugh Thorner atop his soap box on the corner of Broadway and Central Avenue. The Right Reverend, however, sees something else at work buried there; older than Maple Hill, older than Nordeast, older than Lazarus. As with most crackpot sermons or ghost stories, he is met with skepticism. Unfortunately.
Written & Performed by J. Merrill Motz
Shortly after midnight, November 6, 1899, in the Maple Hill Cemetery of Nordeast Minneapolis. Ida Olsen claims she saw something, “a white object, a bearded man with horns”, rise from a grave, and approach her. A holy man is needed for the gathered posse, but the closest they can find that time of night is The Right Reverend Kavanaugh Thorner atop his soap box on the corner of Broadway and Central Avenue. The Right Reverend, however, sees something else at work buried there; older than Maple Hill, older than Nordeast, older than Lazarus. As with most crackpot sermons or ghost stories, he is met with skepticism. Unfortunately.
Paper Soul began in 2013 for the Minnesota Fringe show BOXCUTTER HARMONICA, a two person ghost story of sorts that only had one person in it. The Right Reverend Kavanaugh Thorner did not appear in that production, but he comes and goes.
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota MRAC through a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
