Year: 2007

Since the heyday of conceptualism in the ’70s, there have been artists doing interesting things with sound—not “music,” which is something very different, but sound as evidence of the natural or human world, combined in ways that intensify your consciousness of surroundings. This survey doesn’t cover everyone who has done this kind of work over the last few decades (Usry Alleyne, for instance, isn’t here) but it does represent sound artists ranging from Leif Brush (a pioneer, now in his sixties) to Abinadi Meza (in his twenties). There’ll be a lot of depth to this show, so you’ll need time; give yourself a couple of hours to hear the murmurs and cries of stars, light, and trees. Minnesota Museum of American Art, 651-266-1030.

This show gathers some of the city’s best younger artists, across a broad spectrum of styles and media. Sean Connaughty takes a thoughtful conceptual approach to the intersection of natural form and cultural tropes, using ink, photo, sculpture, words, and whatever else comes to hand. Clea Felien searches for the essence of portrait subjects in her small, left-handed drawings. Celeste Nelms constructs weird photographic metaphors whose open-ended resolutions act like telescopes that track the psyche’s trail across the sky of time. Ben Olson’s expressionistic self-portraits seem to look for the borders of the bearable. Melissa Stang hasn’t shown around here lately but was an important figure in the ’90s, with shows at the Soap Factory and elsewhere. It’ll be fascinating to see what she’s been up to. Gallery Co, 400 1st Ave. N., Minneapolis; 612-332-5252.

The Burning House Group was once the darling of the local theater scene, a collective of talented young performers forged in the crucibles of such dearly departed companies as Eye of the Storm and Margolis Brown. Today, the troupe is best remembered for its hit ’97 production Knock Knock, which was an uproarious farce with plenty of mistaken identities and slamming doors. Now, the company hopes to duplicate that success by returning to its physical-performance roots. What the Butler Saw is a ’60s-era sexual farce smartly written by Joe Orton, the playwright most famous for his black comedy Entertaining Mr. Sloane. This vicious send-up of sexual mores takes place in a psychiatrist’s office where the characters are caught, one by one, with their pants around their ankles. Minneapolis Theater Garage, 711 Franklin Ave. W., Minneapolis; 612-623-9396.

In 2004, the Guthrie Theater offered to send a favorite playwright, Julie Marie Myatt, to wherever in the world she wished to go, just so long as her travels inspired a new play. Myatt chose Cambodia. Once there, she immersed herself in the sex trade, interviewing child prostitutes and even volunteering for organizations trying to rehabilitate the girls. This wasn’t too far a stretch for Myatt, whose repertoire includes such provocative plays as Cowbird, The Joy of Having a Body, and The Sex Habits of American Women, all of which address complicated issues related to sexual identity. With this new piece, Myatt not only explores the challenging subject of the sex trade, but also looks at the motives of aid workers, mostly Westerners, who feel drawn to Cambodia. These do-gooders strive, perhaps in vain, to restore the country’s lost girlhoods. Guthrie Theater, 612-377-2224.

The red nose, that mark of chronic inebriates everywhere, was long ago appropriated by theater performers in Europe seeking a visible symbol of their humility. And believe it or not, the town drunk went on to serve as the muse of a million clowns (those working outside the parade and birthday-party circuits, anyway). In order to discover the clown within, each artist must submit to the rigorous, if not embarrassing, exercise of publicly identifying his or her physical imperfections—perhaps a big butt, twiggy legs, or a frizzy, unmanageable mop. By chance, a group of Minneapolitans has just been through this wringer. Performances of The Red Nose culminate a three-week workshop, led by the visiting Italian clown Giovanni Fusetti, who convinced a dozen or so local performers to embrace and amplify their problem spots. Bedlam Theatre, 1501 6th St. S., Minneapolis; 612-341-1038.

“David Lynch meets Mother Goose”: That’s the vision Hardcover Theater’s writer/director Steve Schroer has for his new play, inspired by an obscure Victorian fantasy called The New Mother. This source material was written for children—it’s a fable that warns, with rich imagery and plenty of fright, against being naughty. And yet Schroer insists his play is for grownups. He lists a secondary source of inspiration as Edgar Allan Poe’s essay, “The Imp of the Perverse,” which allows him to riff on the human compulsion to behave badly at any age. Schroer also has layered in enough sexual tension and bone-chilling ambience (via set, sound, and lighting designs) to turn this creepy kids’ story into a hair-raiser for adults. Hardcover Theater at the Playwrights’ Center,2301 Franklin Ave. E., Minneapolis; 612-581-2229.

The annual celebration of Minnesota books and publishing has new sponsors (the entire city of St. Paul seems to have gotten behind this thing), new digs, and plenty of fresh faces this year. But in a state with so much literary activity going on it’s hard to screw up something so basically virtuous. We could quibble about some of the nominations (and oversights), and will likely squawk about a number of winners, but that’s the pure blood-sport fun of such galas, the nasty flipside to all the merrymaking and clinking of champagne glasses. There’ll apparently be (actually, there better be) plenty of the latter; cocktail and business attire are suggested, and tickets are forty bucks a pop. Crowne Plaza Hotel, 11 Kellogg Blvd. E., St. Paul; 651-222-3242.

Sherman Alexie was born hydrocephalic, and doctors predicted he would suffer severe retardation. However, the very opposite occurred; he showed signs of prodigy, devouring novels by age five. Still, he endured effects of his condition—seizures and bed-wetting—and was subject to bullying on the Spokane Reservation where he grew up. In his new novel Flight (Alexie’s first in ten years), the celebrated author of Indian Killer and Reservation Blues seems to channel that ostracism into a fifteen-year-old protagonist whose acne is so bad he’s known simply as “Zits.” Today more glitterati than geek, Alexie is known for acerbic wit that causes his audience to laugh while their hearts break. Lake of the Isles Lutheran Church, 2020 West Lake of the Isles Pkwy., Minneapolis; 612-374-4023.

While a graduate student at Harvard, Dr. Elaine Pagels spent years studying the Nag Hammadi Library manuscripts, and she has turned that research into a sort of Gnostic cottage industry. Her 1979 classic, The Gnostic Gospels, won both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was included on the Modern Library’s list of the hundred best books of the twentieth century. Throughout her subsequent work, Pagels has demonstrated a dogged and occasionally controversial scholarship, as she has consistently probed and questioned the early history of Christianity, often in the context of her own faith. She continues to pose big and important questions for believers and skeptics alike. Hopkins Center for the Arts, 1111 Mainstreet, Hopkins; 651-209-6799.

The Rake’s parenting editor Renata Frears recently had an opportunity to speak with Roy “Buck” Prescott, controversial author of Breaking the Spirit of Your Unborn Child and Breaking the Spirit of Your Newborn Child (Regnery Publishing). Prescott was in town for the first annual “It’s a Man’s World” symposium at the Best Steak House in Richfield, where he was honored for his pioneering work on the benefits of fetal deprivation.

You argue that not a single drop of breast milk should ever touch a baby’s lips. What’s wrong with breast-feeding?
The breast is the incubator of all manner of harmful pathologies. Every time a mother takes an infant to her breast she’s teaching that child to say, “Give! Give! Give!” while at the same time ensuring that for the rest of her life she’s going to be viewed as a sort of unhappy and unfulfilled ATM machine molded out of flesh. Breast-feeding is the infant’s introduction to America’s pernicious culture of permissiveness; if a child can have easy access to its mother’s breast, what can’t it have? Where do you draw the line?

But many so-called experts claim that breast-feeding helps the mother and baby to bond, and increases the baby’s immunity to many common and potentially devastating diseases.
I have another word for what you refer to as ‘so-called experts’: parrots. Teach any addled child of the ’60s to utter a handful of useless phrases—“nurture,” “self-esteem,” etc…—and you have a so-called parenting expert on your hands. These characters have sown the seeds for an epidemic of social erosion.

You’re a proponent of infrequent physical contact between parents and their newborn. How is a child harmed when it cuddles with its mother or father?
I despise all those feel-good words with doubled consonants—cuddle, snuggle, coddle, etc. Look up ‘affection’ in the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary; it originally meant a sort of passion or lust that was in direct opposition to reason. The primary job of the parent is to communicate rigorous expectations and strict personal boundaries that convey the severity of the life experience and the sort of discipline necessary to survive in a world that is generally indifferent if not outright hostile to any individual’s feelings of self importance or ‘self-esteem.’ I would hope that you have some way to indicate the horror with which I speak that phrase.

In your book you say that corporal punishment is the only way to discipline a child. This goes against the wisdom of many other writers on this subject. Why do you advocate spanking?
Quite simply, because hundreds of years of historical evidence indicates that it’s the single most effective means of communicating parental displeasure and the consequences of misbehavior. This notion that you can bargain with a child without relinquishing the necessary upper hand in a parent/child relationship is utter hogwash. Children are brutal, unscrupulous, and relentless negotiators, and recognizing the distinction between behavior and misbehavior is critical from the moment an infant is born.

What do you say to those who call spanking abusive?
I’d say they’re dangerously naive. These are the people who have turned America’s children into a zombie army of overweight therapy drones. They’ve produced what I call “the unaccountable generation.” When it comes to the nature vs. nurture debate, believe me, nature wins every time. The nurtured child is the child that gets eaten alive when it is eventually thrown to the wolves.

Several other experts, including Dr. Phil, have called your methods “the ranting of an unqualified lunatic.” How do you respond?
I’d say that’s a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Dr. Phil is a charlatan of the sort this country has been producing—and rewarding with obscene wealth—with alarming frequency for far too long. One of his own children is married to a former Playboy bunny, and anyone who would take parenting advice from such an odious fraud is guilty in my mind of criminal child neglect. I’ve repeatedly offered to arm-wrestle Phil McGraw on the Oprah show, but thus far he has ignored my challenges and spared himself further humiliation.

You’re unmarried and don’t have any children of your own. How have you developed your approach?
You don’t have to build a banana to know how to peel and eat one. I was a staff sergeant in the United States Army for a decade. I bred and trained bloodhounds for almost twenty years. I’ve had more dinners, dates, holidays, and public outings ruined by the misbehavior of other people’s infants and children than I could even begin to count.

You write that every child is born with “serious inherent defects,” yet others have argued that every child is born perfect. How are babies
defective?
Every baby is a constellation of defects, some of them unique to the individual child, others endemic to all infants—some might call this constellation of defects ‘human nature.’ Parenting is precisely the process by which these defects are eradicated and the child is trained to be a competent, responsible, and functioning adult. Show me a child who doesn’t learn conformity and strict obedience to authority in the home and I’ll show you a monster that hasn’t yet burst from the laboratory.

How do you explain sex to a young child?
You don’t.

What would be the effect on society if all children’s spirits remained intact?
A nation of ‘enlightened’ depressives who buy their potatoes at co-ops and are prisoners to their increasingly disenchanted and depressed children. ‘Spirit’ is one of the most abused words in the English language, and what this world does not need at this moment in time are any more spirited—and spoiled—children. Deprivation and disappointment breed initiative, and what we desperately need are responsible, realistic kids who are fully prepared to take their licks and who recognize their place in a functional, moral, and civilized society. Dog eat dog, of course, implies that some dogs are going to be eaten. That, in a nutshell, is life, and it’s the essential message of both my books.