rakemag

Minnesota’s own Frances Gumm practically wrote the book on a particular strain of tragic Hollywood irony, living (and dying) unhappily in private, but bringing joy and inspiration to millions as Judy Garland. One of those she changed forever was iconoclastic local choreographer Danny Buraczeski of Jazzdance, whose 2003 debut of this Garland celebration produced some … Read more

A night of wide-ranging new choreography and structured improv from one of our state’s most venerable dance troupes. Artistic director Heidi Hauser Jasmin loves to mix things up, and the kinetic pyrotechnics on display will be as varied in mood as the accompanying music. The movement piece “Tongues” jerks with the wild swagger of Screamin’ … Read more

In France, Mary Beach has a place in the pantheon of major living Surrealists, and frequently collaborated with the likes of Allen Ginsberg and Robert Mapplethorpe. However, she’s not so well known here, in the land of her birth; in fact, Speedboat’s putting on her first-ever Twin Cities show. Her fascinating life includes a stint … Read more

Remember when you could snuggle up with the newspaper rather than read it online? When you could get your information from the phone book rather than from Google? Those were the days. A group of 50 photographers and one installation artist remind us of our love for the tangible as they turn their camera lenses … Read more

Photographer Justin Newhall takes on the myths of the American West, tracing their subtle but inescapable residue in contemporary junkscapes of parking lots, stores, parks, monuments, and suburban tracts. He picks out the sculptural abstractions in a lakeside picnic area in South Dakota, and documents a shaggy heap of invasive Russian olive trees sprawling dumbly … Read more

A simple but powerfully chilling idea ripe with dramatic possibility: What would you do if you were sentenced to die for a crime you didn’t commit? Husband-and-wife writing team Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen (a 1988 Apple Valley High School grad) interviewed forty wrongfully convicted death-row prisoners and boiled their stories down to six. Exonerated’s … Read more

You’ve seen him hobnobbing with Bill Clinton, partying (and attending IMF meetings) with Bono, and doing other cool and prestigious things that world-class playwrights-cum-presidents do. But have you actually seen a play by Vaclav Havel? (We won’t ask about the political essays.) Now’s your chance. Known as Havel’s most “successful” (read: accessible) work, the three … Read more

Will Durst, to paraphrase the old country radio music billboard, was doing political satire before it was hip, and he’s still going strong. Part of the San Francisco contingent of comics who didn’t sell out to Hollywood for sitcoms and potato chip commercials, Durst displays the thoughtfulness of Mort Sahl without Sahl’s patina of Ward … Read more

Here’s a bistro that’s just what it should be, though we would have liked bigger crab cakes for eleven bucks. The spanking new Amsterdam, with its brick-and-wood interior, tin ceiling and little corner-shaped bar looking out onto the Third Street terminus, seems destined to become a favorite jumping-off spot for a night on the town. … Read more