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This season, the Guthrie’s WORLDStage Series has some especially meaty, contemporary takes on classic texts. This Macbeth, for instance, plucked from an ultra-hip niche of London’s theater scene by impresario James Morrison, is recast in a nameless but unmistakably modern African nation. It features an all-black cast with one exception: the character of Lady Macbeth, … Read more

When Bob Mould visits First Avenue, the paint on the walls heats up and starts to become liquid again. Stalactites of tobacco exhalations loosen their grip and drop from the ceiling. And the eardrums of people in the audience begin to ring in a way that will never completely go away, but it won’t hurt … Read more

Perhaps it’s a sign of the times, but it seems a goodly number of our acquaintances get their thrills by slapping around wet lumps of clay. In any of the Twin Cities’ plentiful venues for making pottery, you can find small crowds of dusty people hugging their misshapen pots and discovering their reverence for Warren … Read more

There’s art that perfectly reflects a particular era or discipline, and then there’s art that is a direct and unvarnished reflection of an individual’s mind. When viewing the strange and gorgeous prints of Donovan Durham, you are staring point blank at the workings of this man’s complex insides: his loves, his fantasies, his fears. Dubbed … Read more

No, it’s not all about him–really. Still, we were intrigued by the contrast between the monumental paintings anchoring each end of this decades-spanning exhibit. In ’69, a portrait of the artist as a young scrapper looking to shake things up is rendered with stark black and white precision (this is the masterwork purchased by the … Read more

These captivating and surreal photographs capture a range of moods in various other-worldly northern lands. Three contemporary photographers revisti places throughout Central Asia photographed by Johannes Gabriel (J.G.) Crano, a Finnish scientist and explorer, between 1902 and 1916. While Grano’s photographs show majestic environments relatively undisturbed by his species, his modern successors encounter great changes; … Read more

Ford has led a most interesting life, even by the inflated standards of a profession where outrageous biographies are as common as dust jacket hyperbole. He’s been a high school baseball coach, an editor at American Druggist, and a sportswriter. Then there’s his fiction, which has garnered enough critical hosannas and awards (his 1995 novel … Read more

Bobbie Ann Mason’s straightforward, observant writing about the plain folks of rural Kentucky has generated comparisons to Raymond Carver. Like Carver, her characters are everyday non-heroes, such as a Vietnam veteran suffering from Agent Orange-related problems (In Country) and a truck driver with a road-related leg injury (Shiloh and Other Stories). Clearly, she’s got a … Read more

Watching other people eat revolting things has become a new spectator sport in our reality TV culture. Perhaps this replaces earlier entertainments like gladiator fights and public hangings, thereby satisfying some primal desire to watch others suffer. Of course, these days everyone gets to go home at the end of the show–sometimes with money. Elliot … Read more