Author: Christy DeSmith

At 120 years old, the Grand Army of the Republic Hall over in Litchfield is one of the last-standing halls of its kind in the nation. It’s an inconspicuous building: narrow, pallid, sunk between two ugly, newer structures in the middle of a residential block. It hardly looks deserving of all the festoons Litchfield will bestow on it this month for an anniversary celebration. Built in 1885 to resemble a fort, the building was intended to serve Civil War veterans, much in the same way a VFW hall serves veterans of our day. That noble purpose lasted just two years, though; in 1887, the hall was donated to the city of Litchfield and became the area’s first library.

Today, the Grand Army of the Republic Hall functions largely as a Civil War museum, thanks to a 1961 addition that houses period wedding dresses, artillery heads, and “hairwork.” (Wreaths and wall sculptures made of human hair were all the rage in the late 1800s.) In the front room, wall-to-wall shelves sway with Civil War-era books, mostly thick, dusty volumes recording engagements between the Union and Confederate armies. A middle room serves as a public meeting space and is often reserved by Girl Scout troops and book clubs. In the spirit of the original building, the Minnesota chapter of the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic holds regular meetings there, too.

The walls of the hall are bedecked with portraits of Litchfield’s “Boys of ’61”—old black and white photos of solemn, bearded faces crowned with union army kepis. Many Ladies throughout the state are related to these fellows. “I have three here,” bragged Lois Morlock, who showed me her great-grandfather and two great-uncles. “I have two,” said Jeanie Shoultz Doran, a sixty-something woman with a head of windswept gray hair and an American flag-themed cardigan sweater. She pointed out a great-grandfather and a great-great-uncle.

The Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic is not unlike the better-known women’s auxiliary, the Daughters of the American Revolution, except, of course, the Ladies must trace their lineage to a Civil War Union Army vet rather than one from the American Revolution. Many women belong to both organizations and a slew of others: Daughters of the American Colonists, New England Women, the Military and Hospitalier Order of St. Lazarus, or, in rare instances, United Daughters of the Confederacy. It all depends on who the dead ancestors are, and this can become a bit of an obsession. “Once you get into these organizations, it becomes a challenge to see how many you can qualify for,” said Morlock.

Maureen Minish and Roberta Everling, the youngest women at the meeting (sixty-five and forty-ish, respectively), met at a Daughters of the American Revolution meeting a few years back and have sustained a friendship ever since based on their shared passion for genealogy. “We found that our ancestors were both at the Battle of Vicksburg,” said Everling. Her cheeks flushed a shade to match her pink pearl necklace.

“You know it’s an old group when I bring down the median age,” joked Minish. She and Everling sat side by side at the head table with Minish acting as interim president, leading this meeting of a dozen mostly seventy-plus Ladies. Normally a brusque, gravel-voiced woman, Minish eased into a purr while leading the Ladies through their rituals: recitals of “The Lord’s Prayer,” “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the Pledge of Allegiance, and “The American’s Creed.” When that was finished, she turned to Doran, the group’s pianist, and politely said, “At this point we usually sing a hymn. Do you know a hymn?”

“I know ‘Jesus Loves Me,’” said Doran. She quickly thought better of it. “I know! Let’s do ‘Amazing Grace.’”

Once the ceremony concluded, the ladies got down to business. “Since we don’t have any Civil War veterans anymore, we have to support other causes,” said Minish, smiling stiffly. The ladies agreed to disburse funds to the V.A. hospital, landscaping at Lakewood Cemetery’s Grand Army of the Republic memorial, and to send a twenty-dollar American flag to the National Armed Forces Service Center. They hurried through the financials, seemingly eager to eat lunch together around a table spilling with goodies.

As they cheerfully nibbled on turkey bun sandwiches and chocolate-chocolate chip cookies, the ladies took turns outlining their family trees for one another. They were ignoring the ominous “Boys of ’61”—who appeared cross-eyed, rogue, and unappetizing from their giant portraits overhead—and turned to one of their most important functions: shamelessly recruiting new members. They began speculating about the potential qualifications of their guest. “I bet you qualify,” chirped Everling.—Christy DeSmith

Stepping off the light-rail train at Minneapolis’ Midtown/Lake Street station, you’re surrounded by a menagerie of pastel glass panes, seemingly hovering in midair on the elevated platform. For a tiny second, it feels as though you’re exiting the famed El in Chicago, though this station is newer and tidier than any stop on the Loop—the pavement isn’t yet pocked with black chewing gum. Elevators and concrete stairwells dump riders onto a streetscape that is at first reminiscent of the Jersey turnpike, but varied urban life bustles just a few steps beyond the Hiawatha off-ramps. To the west, there’s the Midtown YWCA and a host of thrift stores, like Savers and the ReUse Center. To the east lies a cluster of ethnic restaurants and big box retailers.

With the train came the expectation of change to this stretch of Lake Street, which has a sprawling, gritty feel. So far there’s not much evidence of upscaling, or even the addition of a newsstand. (Aren’t all train stops supposed to have newsstands?) In 2006, however, the Lake Street Reconstruction Project promises more greenery (already, trees and a grassy walkway have been added to the Hi-Lake shopping center), as well as attractive pedestrian light fixtures, all to improve the intersection’s curb appeal. Nevertheless, it’s hard to imagine this neighborhood becoming posh.

On the contrary, this is a stubbornly practical, economically accessible place. Most of its shopping centers were planted in the 1950s and sixties and, despite various cosmetic improvements, look it. Everywhere, families are out acquiring the necessities of life. From the light rail, as well as the 21A bus line, mothers and children stream toward Target and Rainbow Foods. They cross vast parking lots, and pass Schooner’s Bar, before swooshing through automatic doors.

What’s most unique about Hiawatha and Lake is the way in which its malls interplay with smaller storefronts and restaurants—not to mention the varied ethnic mix of patrons. From the Cub Foods parking lot, just across from the Target parking lot, you can see the rainbow-colored flag soaring above Patrick’s Cabaret, a longtime venue for performance artists of every stripe. Nearby, the East African Gift Shop and Grocery is stocked with injera bread as well as Laffy Taffy. And along 27th Avenue, lined up one after the other, there is La Casa de Samuel Mexican restaurant, Midori’s Floating World Café (a sushi and tea bar), Curves for Women, and Al Qudus Halal Meat and Grocery.

Back at the train station, an African-American woman chases her daughters—both braided and pigtailed, one in her Girl Scout khakis—toward the platform. A teenager lugs his BMX bike up the stairs. An elderly Asian man, his canvas bag bursting with groceries, opts for the elevator. Within two minutes, north- and south-bound trains whisk them all away, depositing a new cast of eclectic Lake Street characters in their place.—Christy DeSmith

Back in the 1950s and 60s, a day trip to Excelsior, the waterfront town along the south shores of Lake Minnetonka, was the highlight of summer for many a city kid. The main attraction was the widely hyped Excelsior Amusement Park, which was inspired by Coney Island and had opened in 1925. Proprietor Ray Colihan was an astute promoter, luring fun-seekers with a harrowing wooden roller coaster that, like the one at Coney Island, was called the Cyclone, and with teen concerts at the Danceland ballroom. (The Rolling Stones played there in 1964, on their first North American tour, and rumor has it that “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” is the result of a conversation between Mick Jagger and a local character, “Mr. Jimmy.”)

Excelsior Amusement Park was demolished in 1974, a year after it closed. Not surprisingly, high-buck condominiums and a restaurant now occupy the site. Certainly, Excelsior always had its exclusive side. In the late 1800s, it was a resort destination whose visitors included wealthy Southerners looking for cool breezes and raucous yacht parties. These days, the town is more sedate, but that’s not to say it has lost its independent spirit. Two years ago, it unleashed a small but notorious ad campaign, “Secede From Starbucks Nation,” which was conceived to play up its old-fashioned main street and concentration of locally owned businesses. (Dunn Bros Coffee has an outpost there, as does the one-and-only 318 coffeeshop/bistro.)

Sure, there are gift shops and candy stores a-plenty, but there are also a host of unique businesses in historic buildings, like the three-story International Order of Odd Fellows building, which is crowned by carved I.O.O.F. initials and houses the Minnetonka Music instrument store. Although neighborhood drug- and hardware stores have gone the way of the Cyclone, stalwarts like the Dock Theater, a discount art-house cinema, and the steadfastly independent Excelsior Bay Books still do a brisk business. Other idiosyncratic ventures include the sixty-five-year-old Old Log Theatre, Adele’s Frozen Custard, and Cynthia Rae Dress Code, a “Bold, Hot, Young” boutique that carries plus-sized clothing.

Still, for throngs of beach goers and other connoisseurs of summer fun, the real draw in Excelsior is Lake Minnetonka. Excursion boats moor at a dock at the downtown marina or even at a lakeside bench on Excelsior Commons, the sprawling park that hugs the waterfront. Families congregate at the ice cream cart and the playground. Couples picnic on grassy knolls. With promenades and park benches offering strategic views of Excelsior Bay, the Commons is the perfect place to soak up summer.

—Christy DeSmith

Anybody who’s attended a Fringe Festival knows the drill. In the first days, before word-of-mouth reviews get out, you flip through the program, scanning for provocative or otherwise attention-grabbing titles (see this year’s I’m Naked and I’m Ready), which might indicate a show worth taking a chance on. Last year, scouring the listings, I zeroed in on Whiskey Bars, not really for its title, but because it promised two things that tickle my fancy: Kurt Weill songs and cabaret.

Fifteen minutes into the show, my friend was drumming her palm against her knee, trying to help this poor fellow (an out-of-towner, by the way) keep time. With no rhythm and, worse, no pitch, he butchered Weill’s songs. Even more painful was the narrative thread, a story about a past-his-prime performer making backstage confessions to a ghostly critic. In other words, this was a show about the woes of being a bad actor.

As with so many art forms, just because theater can be done solo doesn’t mean it should be. “Why do they often insist on doing at least three of the following tasks themselves: writing, directing, performing, composing, and design?” That was a question posed earlier this year by New York Times critic Margo Jefferson, in an essay called “Words to the Wise Performance Artist: Get Help. Collaborate. Grow.” Human beings, she argued, are endowed with but one gift, two if they’re lucky (three if they’re Meredith Monk). Thus, artistic expression is better served when artists with complementary gifts collaborate—see Gilbert and Sullivan, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Mozart and da Ponte.

Whiskey Bars neatly showcased Jefferson’s point. This performer, who had an impressive opera resume, had shouldered many tasks outside his realm of capabilities. His text luxuriated in solipsism. His interpretation compelled him to flit about as if he had swallowed Mexican jumping beans. That, in turn, buried all musical rhythm or pitch.

Much of this could have been avoided had he engaged with a real director—someone to camp out in the sixth row during rehearsals, shaping the show from the perspective of its audience, rather than the performer. Theater cannot exist without an audience; even when the impetus to create a solo show is to exorcise personal demons, why put your work onstage if you don’t envision some sort of payoff for those watching?

Judging by the growth of one-person shows at Fringe Festivals here and around the world, the numbers of people who want to get up onstage and gamble on that payoff are, to say the least, not subsiding. Ease and economy are two prime factors—shows like extended monologues and unaccompanied acts are among the least expensive and most easily produced forms of theater. It follows, then, that the low-tech, nonjuried Fringe Festival environment (for which acts are chosen by lottery) is a natural breeding ground for them; this year, about one in five Minnesota Fringe productions (August 4 through 14 this year) is a solo show. The Minnesota Fringe Festival, the biggest in the U.S., even helped spawn a handful of solo celebrities, like the provocateur Heidi Arneson, ancient tale-teller Charlie Bethel, shtick-man Ari Hoptman, and the hilariously self-loathing Amy Salloway. Even Kevin Kling counts in a way—National Public Radio made him famous, but scores of fans look forward to his annual Fringe show.

As a genre, the one-person performance is hardly monolithic. A single performer might play multiple, even dozens of characters, as in Becky Mode’s Broadway hit Fully Committed (produced to much acclaim by the Jungle Theater two years ago). Then there’s the lonely cabaret singer, stringing together songs with simple and often innuendo-laced narrative; and performers who blur the lines between theater and standup (see Margaret Cho, Billy Crystal, and even Dame Edna). But the largest subspecies of one-person performance, the one propagating within Fringe Festivals with the most vigor, is the theatrical cousin to literary memoir, or even reality television. These shows often are written, performed, and directed by a single person and mostly or wholly concerned with that person’s life. At this year’s Festival, Esera Tuaolo, the gay former Vikings football player, is slated to perform For the Rest of My Life, and Kling will dish up another helping of home-state stories in Dick da Tird. Salloway, who had a local and national Fringe Fest hit with Does This Monologue Make Me Look Fat? will relate tales from her summers at Jewish camp in So Kiss Me Already, Herschel Gertz!

In an age of DIY everything, this surfeit of self-involved theater comes as no big surprise. Glancing across the larger spectrum of pop culture, it’s easy to find what’s fanning the flames of our performance fantasies: home recording technology, desktop video- and music-editing suites, and, more pointedly, the glut of reality television series and makeover shows. It may be a stretch to say everyone’s an artist, but surely we can all be actors, or at least performers of some sort. Maybe the private citizen is becoming obsolete; our struggles—with intimacy, with weight loss, with marriage—are no longer deemed mundane. Depending on how much of ourselves we are willing to expose, if we’re willing to perform our problems, we’re sure to attract at least a few voyeurs.

From the audience perspective, confessional theater appeals to our often prurient sense of curiosity. In that respect, among last year’s tell-alls, Salloway’s Does This Monologue Make Me Look Fat? did not just go the farthest; it was also one of the best. The audience knew all along that the insufferable main character was Salloway herself; still, they laughed raucously (and some cried) because her stories—late-night supermarket binges; an attempt to find self-acceptance at a convention of obese lesbians, even though she’s heterosexual—were as devastating as they were sidesplitting. Salloway is apparently one of those doubly gifted artists, having written and performed her show (she also apparently got lucky in going without a director). The script was stacked with witty turns of phrase and conversational stylings, but more important, it was clear that Salloway the performer managed to detach herself from Salloway the person (as, of course, any good actor must do). She treated herself as a character, and offered a perspective on that character that was neither glamorous nor protective.

It’s not just acting and writing that draws us to solo performers, despite the considerable chance that we’ll be disappointed by what they offer. There’s also something noble about their perseverance. In some cases, such as Salloway’s, these folks consider themselves outcasts from the larger ensemble theater world. Salloway is obviously a capable actor, but she doesn’t fit the two most popular actress prototypes, the ingénue and the “comforting aunty.” Thus her longtime battle to get cast in ensemble productions. Yet passion pushed her on to make a name serving up one-woman sideshows.

Also, it can be mighty lonely up there onstage. Many of us have a distinct fear about public speaking, let alone baring all, emotionally at least, before a live audience; this feeds our admiration for people who do. And in my case, I suspected seeing a show about a fat actress (this was well before Kirstie Alley’s TV show) would leave me feeling better about myself. Somehow we take comfort in knowing there are people more messed up than we are, and luckily for us, they’re everywhere these days.

But beyond all that, first-rate solo performers can challenge us to have a more engaging theater experience. After all, they have no one to rely on except their audience, whereas in ensemble productions, the actors create energy among themselves. At last year’s festival, local storyteller Dave Mondy seemed to be talking directly to his audience in This Love Train is Unstoppable and I Am the Conductor—but it was less an incarnation of the dreaded “interactive theater” than it was a nod to solo theater’s kinship with cabaret, standup, and one-on-one storytelling.

These forms are bound together by performers who “fake” trusting relationships with their audiences, which can elicit a more passionate response and sometimes make the whole experience rather volatile. It’s the rare solo show that can trick our imaginations to go outside the playhouse. Suddenly, we can become less interested in our own entertainment and, instead, more invested in the well being of its star. In the instance of Salloway, when I eventually spoke to her, long after seeing her show, I had to repress the desire to ask about her personal life. After all, while her performance was certainly drawn from real life, it was also necessary to remember that it had all been an act.

With its low ceilings, faint sawdust smell, wood paneling, and seventies-era earth tones, Jim Fiorentino’s front office is what you’d expect of an old garage door company. Going into the larger warehouse, however, is like entering some kind of a fairytale world. It’s not just the massive, hundred-year-old Belgian band organ, decked out with painted roses and latticework—the walls of this palatially proportioned room are covered with wooden clocks, carvings, and phonographs.

“I’ve never really let on that it’s kind of a museum in here,” said Fiorentino, who closed his Minneapolis garage-door business fifteen years ago. While the surrounding Warehouse District was going condo-crazy, Fiorentino was remodeling his old workplace into a showcase for his hobbies. He walked among rows of display cases filled with World War I-era bayonets; nearby, shelves swayed under the weight of woodcarvings from Polynesia, China, Thailand, and other myriad corners of the globe. Pointing to the top of a bookcase, he noted several renderings of horses done by his father with a pocketknife.

Clocks, however, are a particular passion of Fiorentino’s. By way of instruction, he held up a photograph of a carved French clock, comparing its “shoddy workmanship” to the sharper edges carved by more detail-oriented Germans. “Sloppy!” he said, shaking his head at the photo. A motley collection on the warehouse’s longest wall—some 140 feet—includes ornately carved “gingerbread” clocks that adorned American kitchens a hundred years ago, and a single, amazing nineteenth-century Japanese model that vaguely resembles a cuckoo and keeps time using the sun.

An awe-inspiring assortment of cuckoos, many of which Fiorentino restored himself, dates back to 1840. The most prized ones hang in a small corridor off the main room. “These are all cuckoo and quails,” Fiorentino said, maneuvering the hands of one clock to show how it would produce the wail of a quail every fifteen minutes, and a cuckoo on the hour. Another string of cuckoos, made in Germany during the late 1800s, features images of strung-up pheasant and chamois carcasses. “I get people in here saying ‘I don’t like the dead animals on that clock!’” Fiorentino said, a bit peevishly. “But the folks who made it were hunters. That’s how they survived. This is what they knew.”

He brightened up after turning toward a festive clock, one of the largest in the place. “This here is my lady friend’s favorite,” he said, running his fingers across its leafy ornamentation and pointing out a sprightly, avian version of a nativity scene. “She likes the birdies in the nest there.”

Returning to his front office, Fiorentino admitted that “some of my friends call me cuckoo Jim.” But when it came to explaining why he’d bothered to amass such a collection, he struggled. “I just … how should I say it … I like cuckoo clocks!”—Christy DeSmith

One hundred and fifty years ago, when a Methodist pastor stumbled into
what became Trempealeau County, Wisconsin, he thought he’d found the
Garden of Eden. Dotted with apple trees and surrounded by lush green
bluffs, no other place, he argued, conformed so closely to the biblical
description of Eden. Even now, despite upstream polluters that have
wreaked havoc on Trempealeau’s stretch of the Mississippi, the town of
Trempealeau continues to offer a slice of Midwestern paradise.
Trempealeau’s distinctly easygoing character, along with a persistent
mist that hangs in the air, brings to mind many of those woodsy havens
found along the beautiful Pacific Northwest coast. Driving to
Trempealeau from any direction is a pleasure, pocketed, as it is,
within a cluster of rolling knolls and crags (typical in this part of
Wisconsin, especially along the river). Every which way, hills offer
panoramic views of farmland furrows and wooded wildlife preserves. A
road down the back end of one such hill deposits you into the town’s
modest commercial area, where two city blocks are lined with gift
shops, law offices, taverns, and lawns that are often overwhelmed by
the Mississippi. (In French, Trempealeau means “soaked in water”.)

Downtown’s centerpiece is the Trempealeau Hotel, a nineteenth-century
inn, restaurant, and saloon that has become a fashionable destination.
Dining rooms paneled in natural wood, wall-to-wall bay windows, and
Green Bay Packers paraphernalia set a laid-back tone. Couples gaze out
on the river as they nosh on kraut ’n’ cheese or walnut burgers—yes,
this rural restaurant serves a number of vegetarian dishes. In the bar,
which is darker and cozier than the dining areas, the walls are covered
with antlers, taxidermied fish, and autographed celebrity head shots.
Because the town’s population is just 1,600, most of whom make their
livings in nearby Winona or LaCrosse, the bar seems to service more
spandex-ed cyclists and city slickers than it does locals.

There is no doubt that during the warm seasons, the town draws a
far-flung, outdoorsy crowd. That’s because it’s surrounded by miles and
miles of gorgeous trails that trace the riverfront and wind around
mountainous bluffs. Off-road cyclists can cruise alongside prairies and
buffalo farms or take grueling, uphill treks. Trempealeau even
organizes a series of bike races, including the Catfish Days 50 Mile
Bike Race and Tour on July 9. Hikers are free to hopscotch
stone-studded footpaths in Perrot State Park or bird-watch in the
wetlands of Trempealeau National Wildlife Refuge, one of the nation’s
best spots to see bald eagles.

For those who don’t feel like sweating, Trempealeau Hotel proprietor
Jim Jenkins offers another option. A blues and reggae aficionado,
Jenkins organizes a summer concert series that sends couples and
families alike out into the hotel’s grassy backyard, where they can
lounge before a rickety concert stage featuring regional bands.
—Christy DeSmith

Just the other day, tickets for the next Cirque du Soleil show in Minneapolis went on sale. Cirque du Soleil has a lot to answer for in these parts. Five years ago, Charlie and Julie Zelle took their children, Charlotte and Nick, on a family trip to see the trampoline queens and contortionists at a Cirque show. It appears to have changed the course of Zelle family history.

“Nick was absolutely transformed,” Charlie said proudly.

“Afterwards he started hanging from bedsheets tied to the banister.”

Nick, now ten years old, is hard at work chasing his big-top dreams. He takes both private and group aerialist lessons, studying, among other things, hand-balancing and trapeze. His parents don’t lose sleep over his threats to run off with the circus one day; rather, they’re encouraging him. Charlie takes his son shopping for tight-fitting, glittery costumes. He recently rigged an eighteen-foot gymnastics structure in the backyard. In February the family even traveled to Montreal so Nick could audition for a part with Cirque du Soleil.

In the Twin Cities, there are enough brave parents like the Zelles to sustain two circus performance schools: St. Paul-based Circus Juventas and Minneapolis-based Xelias Aerial Arts School. Nick began his studies at Circus Juventas soon after his first encounter with Cirque du Soleil. Then, as his enthusiasm grew, he moved on to study with Xelias, regarded as the more “serious” circus school. (Juventas and Xelias offer classes for adults, too. It is said to be great exercise—fear undoubtedly burns a lot of calories.)

Lessons are a little pricey, but no more than sending a child to an average dance studio. At Xelias, a one-on-one lesson costs eighty dollars, whereas a more affordable group class costs fifteen dollars. It’s certainly less expensive than hockey, which many parents regard as the money pit of all sports. Nick, standing four feet tall and with round, daydreamy eyes, doesn’t want to play hockey because he can’t stomach the thought of falling on the ice.

The Xelias studio is in a small warehouse in Northeast Minneapolis. Inside, the floor is carpeted with mats and crash pads. Aerialist playthings hang from the ceiling like dense jungle undergrowth, giving the place a tangled feel. Students can climb as high as thirty feet, but generally hover at a comfortable ten. During a recent session, Nick performed an exhausting hour-long circuit workout that took him from trapeze to ropes to silks (huge diaphanous drapes suspended from the ceiling). Then, after pausing to give a visitor a wet-noodle handshake, he completed an acrobatic routine of round-offs, handsprings, and backward tucks. Soon he was supporting his own body weight on a high hoop and doing no-handed “dead man” dismounts. After his feet hit the floor, he raised his chin, stuck out his chest, and stretched his thin, white arms toward the sky with a little flourish. Then he glanced over to see if anyone had been looking.

“I’m torturing the children,” joked Meg Elias, a professional aerialist and founder of the school, who was drilling another student through sit-ups and pull-ups. (The would-be aerialist has plenty of earthbound exercises.) All along, the lithe and bendy young Nick bounced between apparatuses. He made a string of elegant poses on the high hoop, even touched his heel to his head while hanging upside-down from the thing. Then he gracefully climbed and wound himself in the silks. In between sets, he panted and sipped orange Gatorade.

Most of the training is directed toward a performance, the aerialist’s version of a recital. At one such event, two years ago, Nick performed thirty feet above the audience on an apparatus called the Spanish Web. It is a long, hanging rope with a high loop in which the aerialist can tie a hand or a foot. Nick’s little wrist was knotted in, and a seemingly wicked grown-up aerialist on the ground violently twirled the rope cowboy-style. Nick’s rigid body quickly picked up RPMs, like a ceiling fan turned to high. It was a sight that induced not just gasps, but actual knuckle-chewing. Charlie remembered, too: “Nick was spinning around and the whole audience went Ohhh! Everybody was thinking, What kind of parents would let their kid do that?”—Christy DeSmith

About two years ago, a Northfield, Minnesota, man named Fred Herzog had a vision that made him weep for hours each day for weeks on end. “Jesus came to me and said, ‘You are crying out to the souls of people in South Minneapolis,’” he said. “When I discovered South Minneapolis, it was narrowed to Uptown. I saw young people in chains, hands in chains, legs in chains. And I heard these words: ‘These people are in the devil’s chain gang. Pray for them so they can be set free.’”

For two years, Herzog conducted services in an Uptown-area living room. But today, thanks to a growing assembly of worshipers, his church has been blessed with a permanent home in the sub-basement of a strip mall. The congregation calls itself the Uptown Fellowship, and the name fits. It is made up of a few dozen ragtag members. One recent Sunday night, I noticed a tattooed and pierced schoolteacher, an African-American man in a Nike jumpsuit, a homecoming queen from my hometown (she was a year ahead of me), and a mop-haired guitarist who fronts the church band. (This last congregant I thought quite attractive, until he shared his thoughts on the importance of freeing ourselves from lust. Busted!)

The band jammed off-key as parishioners shuffled in for the service. There were coy waves and earnest smiles. As coats were hung and diaper bags stashed under seats, personal Bibles came out. This being a special spontaneous service, however, the Bibles were soon set aside in favor of making a great noise with the house band. Parishioners jumped to their feet, clapped their hands, and swayed their hips. A middle-aged guy in the front row, wearing a Calvin and Hobbes T-shirt, shouted “Praise Jesus!”

A church elder stepped forward, and the music lulled. Then the room was filled with the odd clamor of someone worshiping in tongues. The elder closed his eyes and raised his voice. “I think there’s someone here who needs to be healed,” he said. He brought forth a parishioner whose chronic illnesses were well known to the congregation, and he beckoned others to place their hands on her shoulders. Then the keyboardist complained of knee pain and two parishioners knelt in front of her, laid their hands on her patella, and prayed. Soon the bulk of the congregation was splintered into several small huddles, each murmuring prayers. The band provided instrumental ambience. The elder now shouted to be heard: “I’m feeling that there’s someone here with neck pain! Is there someone with a digestive problem?”

As the commotion settled, John Shank opened his Bible to the book of Isaiah, as instructed by Herzog. By day, Shank is a professional animator. Here, he is a church elder and Bible-study leader. A person worshiping next to Shank would notice that he has devised an elaborate highlighting system that divides and subdivides biblical texts into blues, yellows, and oranges (only prepositions are left behind). He followed along as Herzog dissected a passage on King Hezekiah, the Old Testament king who died young as punishment for pride and bitterness. Not being burdened by traditional notions of theology, Herzog speculated that premature death is thus evidence of certain kinds of sin. “Humpf,” said Shank, closing his Bible at sermon’s end.

After the service, everyone moved to the back of the room to eat tacos, coo over babies, and make a visitor feel welcome. One of the Fellowship’s rising stars, a twenty-six-year-old fashion designer, described it as “a charismatic-type church” and admitted to tempering that definition in accordance with Uptown attitudes. She related a dream in which she was anointing the sick with oil, and she was excited to have realized that dream earlier in the evening, before the sermon. As she told her story, I began to see what binds this hip young woman with golden highlights in her hair to the congregation’s eclectic mix of tightly permed sixty-somethings and burned-out Gen Xers. It’s not so much the literalist reading of Scripture, which she and other parishioners didn’t want to discuss over dinner. Rather, it’s a taste for mysticism and a belief that Herzog provides a special link to the divine.

Even Shank, regarded as the most academic in the bunch, said he thinks Herzog is specially attuned to demonic spirits and has a gift for warding them off with prayer. After a youth spent in more traditional Christian settings—places he called “dead churches”—and dalliances with Hinduism, hatha yoga, and psychedelic drugs, he’s all too happy to be following Herzog’s flamboyant path to God. “After being in the presence of the Holy Spirit, I’d find it insulting to be in a dead church,” he said.—Christy DeSmith

One day each spring, thousands of partygoers descend on St. Paul’s West Side to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. On the other 364 days, the parade route along Cesar Chavez Street—including the business district branded and marketed as District del Sol—is something of an urban hamlet. Geographically protected by the Mississippi River from years of downtown development (and redevelopment), and isolated by steep bluffs and caves along its other borders, District del Sol has always marched to its own beat. The only connections to St. Paul proper, it seems, are a bridge and one of those odious Peanuts statues, although this version of Linus wears a cheeky sombrero.

District del Sol was the sticks back in 1874, when the city of St. Paul absorbed it. Lying south of downtown at a bend in the river, which somehow confuses everyone into calling it the “West Side,” it was thought too removed for residential and business development by downtown sophisticates. So immigrant communities started settling the cast-off river flats: first the Germans in the late 1800s, then Eastern Europeans and Russian Jews. By the 1920s, a wave of Chicano immigrants had settled the West Side; their influence remains most visible today.

Spanish-language medical clinics and tax services dot Cesar Chavez Street. A mosaic monument identifies the local playground as Parque Castillo (Castle Park). A few retailers are scattered throughout the district: a grocery with a portrait of the Virgin de Guadalupe in the entry; a boutique bursting with tiny white shoes and christening dresses; two Western wear shops with walls of cowboy hats in numerous shades of tan. Storefronts are plastered with signs advertising, in Spanish, everything from homes for sale to outdoor festivals. But the neighborhood’s biggest draw is its dozen Mexican restaurants and cantinas. Some, like Boca Chica, are well established and tastefully decorated in colors of the Aztec palette, while others seem pulled together with found furnishings, like the scrappy Mi Tierra.

According to the Ramsey County Historical Society, the oldest structures in Del Sol are “architecturally insignificant,” a status that likely stems from their ornament-free utility. Bright, hand-painted signs and murals bring a cheer to the kind of industrial structures that elsewhere meet bulldozers. Whereas the bright yellow and red logo of a global fast food joint might look garish among more manicured brownstones, in this neighborhood it appears almost drab alongside the jaunty, hand-lettered pink and green sign for Don Panchos Panaderia.

Similarly, the bleached housing complexes cropping up along Del Sol’s periphery counter the neighborhood’s tidy row houses. This clash of threadbare and new, modest and lively, defines the handmade texture of Del Sol. Strolling the sidewalks, your feet pick up dust and BK ketchup packets, while the sizzle of fresh carnitas and the sunshiny ring of mariachi music, piped outdoors from the swankier restaurants, fill the air.
—Christy DeSmith

Opera is not for entry-level art patrons. Generally, it’s something you dabble in only after mastering theater, orchestra concerts, show tunes, music videos, and punk rock. When you finally arrive at the altar of a 225-pound operatic Valkyrie, well, it’s sort of like what Richard Gere said to Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman: “Those who love it will always love it. Those who hate it might come to appreciate it, but they’ll never truly love it.”

Years after seeing Pretty Woman—and, thank heavens, listening to La Bohème on my bedroom stereo (I knew Mimi had tuberculosis, but I didn’t expect her to sound like a calf at the slaughterhouse), I now know that Gere’s line is only half-true. Sure, operatic singing immediately grabs some and repels others, but there are built-in obstacles to appreciating this art form. Pre-recorded and portable music, for one, reigns in our era; and as I learned with Mimi, the acoustic power of opera doesn’t translate well to recordings. One cannot fall in love with Puccini via MP3.

Above all, would-be opera lovers need to feel welcomed to their seats. As it is, opera is snobby. It’s expensive. If the music doesn’t put you off, the ticket price and pageantry just might. The story of how American opera got so plumped up with pomp is a hundred-plus-year-old tale, peopled by nouveau riche who liked the idea of an exclusionary art form. No doubt, their hoity-toity traditions carry on in many ways; the pie charts for Minnesota Opera’s current audience demographics, for example, paint a picture of a rich, mostly white crowd with graduate degrees.

But elsewhere, there are hints that opera’s bodice is about to burst into populism. For starters, recent smaller, more intimate productions like Theatre de la Jeune Lune’s Maria de Buenos Aires or Theater Latté Da’s La Boheme drew sell-out crowds of casual theatergoers and avant-garde types wearing obscure denim labels. I recently watched a young man with a red mohawk bound up the stairs at Jeune Lune to get a good seat, his wallet chain jingling against his pocket change (no one seemed surprised about him but me). Outside the theaters, bars are hosting opera recitals; a duo known as “Opera Babes” is making hit records; a gargantuan production of Carmina Burana is on a nationwide stadium tour; and—my favorite—classically trained singers are performing “hip-hopera,” operatic odes to Eminem and Ol’ Dirty Bastard. (Here’s hoping a Twin Cities station will pick up this trend, which currently flourishes on a hip-hop station in New York City).

It’s hard to pinpoint when this opera boom began, but the first leap toward the form’s democratization came in the 1980s and 1990s, with the advent of supertitles, which are much like foreign-film subtitles, but projected above the stage in huge type. For the first time, American audiences had a play-by-play translation of French, German, and Italian librettos—and thus an understanding of how truly sensational, even downright trashy, most opera stories are.
Then, in 1997, a National Endowment for the Arts study made a shocking discovery: Opera fans aren’t dying. In fact, the median age of an opera patron was on par with the fashionable theatergoing set and slightly younger than classical music concertgoers (all of whom hover in their mid-forties). Looking more closely at their forty-, thirty-, even twentysomething audience base, many opera companies “rebranded” themselves with sexy ad campaigns and edgier productions. Minnesota Opera even spawned a “Young Professionals Group,” which is just an urbane thing to call a singles club.

During this same time, small-scale opera productions started cropping up across the country. They were—and continue to be—revolutionary in many ways, but their key value is that they get people up close and personal with the noisemakers, which is essential to falling in love with the form. (Here, folks of modest means can afford the front-row seats.) Minnesota is home to one of the nation’s sexiest mini-opera booms, thanks in large part to Theatre de la Jeune Lune artistic director Dominique Serrand and his preferred troupe: a dashing baritone named Bradley Greenwald and the beautiful, crooning Baldwin sisters; but credit is also due to North Star Opera and Theater Latté Da.

Anecdotally, attendance at traditional theater productions appears to be flat, but opera shows, both big and small, are making bank. Both Jeune Lune’s Maria de Buenos Aires and Latté Da’s La Bohème had extended, sold-out runs; on the more traditional end of the spectrum, Minnesota Opera sells upward of ninety percent of its seats available in an average season. Of course, opera performances are not nearly as abundant as those for theater, but clearly arts patrons are flocking to the few opera options available to them.

For many Americans, operatic singing sounds as unnatural as Italian bluegrass or French rap. In the U.S., our ear for music is inevitably shaped by our own rich vocal traditions, spanning rock, country, blues, jazz, and hip-hop. Tying these disparate, homegrown forms together are vocal techniques that tend toward intimacy and “throatiness.” Operatic singing, on the contrary, originates from places deeper in the body. Quite literally, young girls training as opera singers are told to sing from their vaginas (look closely and you occasionally will see a soprano holding herself there during her highest Cs). Aside from that gendered extreme, most musicians would agree that opera vocals originate in the abdomen, as opposed to rock music, which is more from the throat or the head.
These techniques can make opera sound inflated and piercing, especially to those who came of age listening to pop. So why are legions of younger Americans cozying up to that blaring sound now? The folks I know in the opera biz are effusive about the “heightened emotion” that colors opera, referring to the unrestrained, full-body effort operatic singing requires. Those of us with broader musical palates, however, usually find that operatic singing sounds no more or less emotional than, say, Johnny Rotten snarling his way through “God Save the Queen.”

However, once I found myself five hundred feet from Bradley Greenwald as he sang the “Flower Song,” during Jeune Lune’s Carmen, it hit me: Operatic singing is vastly more athletic than other forms. It involves—and exhausts—every muscle, every nerve of the body. As Greenwald’s voice overtook him, his jaw trembled; his chest vibrated; his knees quivered. That’s not to say that a good punk-rock frontman doesn’t work up an honest sweat, but an opera tenor, for example, stands at the edge of what human bodies can do. His effort is poured exclusively into his voice. For a male singer to maintain that high vocal range for three hours while also cutting through an eighty-five-piece orchestra unamplified is nothing short of Olympic.

That sort of endurance singing certainly can be emotionally over the top, but it’s not the sort of passion easily recognized by an ear tuned to pop. Whether a fortissimo communicates anger or lust, for example, we opera converts may never discern from our third-tier balcony seats. We just know it’s loud—and that’s good. In fact, what we greenhorns love in our opera, what keeps us going back for more, are those earsplitting arias and muscular, triple-axel staccatos. Here in Minnesota, those with a penchant for aural flashiness are particularly blessed with Minnesota Opera, an organization that entertains a rare fascination with bel canto, an eighteenth-century Italian opera style with vocal arrangements so dense and so busy, they’d make Beyoncé dizzy.

Some opera directors credit the so-called MTV generation, which grew up watching visual representations of music, with rediscovering opera. While, in my mind, watching a four-minute Whitesnake video doesn’t exactly lend itself to an appreciation for a four-hour Wagner production, there does seem to be some kind of
correlation. The ADD generation, as I prefer to call it, needs total sensory stimulation. We’re bored with singer-songwriters who stand onstage like a sack of potatoes, seemingly as unimpressed with their music as we are. We’ve exhausted our tolerance for text-heavy theater in which actors holler at each other without ever bringing so much as a slouch to their mannered, ramrod postures. If we’re going to be entertained for two, three, even four hours, there had better be something in it for the eyes and ears. Opera offers that: The singing is electric. The costumes and sets are awe-inspiring. The passions burn hot. (Yes, there have been opera productions in which women do a version of the bump and grind on or near the hoods of automobiles, as in those classic Whitesnake videos.)

There’s also a novelty, a throwback anti-hipness about opera. The singers are burly. The stage directions are shameful, basically just variations on shuffling the fifty-man chorus on and off stage. And the antiquated stories—let’s be frank here, since the operas we like best predate our grandparents—are unburdened with the concern for subtly that plagues contemporary art. Fathers lose their minds over their daughters’ lost virginities. Husbands in disguise madly track down wandering wives. Lovers belt out hardcore finales just seconds before dropping dead. It’s grand, indeed—no wonder the rich folks have been hoarding this stuff.