"Where is Brad Zellar?" you might ask, as his hiatus from The Rake has created quite a void. Happily, he’s been busy promoting his new book, Suburban World: The Norling Photos, from Borealis Books. Zellar discovered Irwin Norling in 2002, when he unearthed Norling’s neglected negatives from the Bloomington Historical Society archives. Struck by the … Read more
Dvorak’s Cello Concerto is a romantic work of unabashed grandeur, with a lush and lyrical first movement, a pensive and ethereal middle, and a swelling, pile-driving, rondo-form finale that briefly pauses to dredge up elements of the first two movements before coalescing into a passionate crescendo. Sommerfest artistic director Andrew Litton will conduct Scandinavian cellist … Read more
Smart as Hitchcock, incisive as Wilder, and independently minded as Cassavetes, Otto Preminger remained largely peerless during his career. He was one of the first Hollywood auteurs to challenge censorship rules and explore his own vision—one populated with honest studies of drug addiction, sexual deviance, and corrupt politics. As an establishment director, he introduced an … Read more
Recent conversations with Jon Ferguson, that rising star of the local theater scene, revealed a topical theme: The man is headlong in love. Since he and his partner, performer Megan Odell of Live Action Set, recently welcomed a baby boy into the world, Ferguson—formerly an itinerant, couch-surfing bachelor—finds himself an unlikely inhabitant of a state … Read more
As part of its celebration of National Poetry Month, Open Book will host The Face of Poetry, an exhibit of Margaretta Mitchell’s photographs of celebrated practitioners of the art, not one of which is recognizable to the average American (March 7–April 30) … One such luminary, Edward Hirsch—an excellent poet and a truly great writer … Read more
St. Paul filmmaker Ali Selim’s Sweet Land, a Minnesota-made indie labor of love that garnered critical acclaim and spawned a minor cult, was adapted from Bemidji writer Will Weaver’s 1989 short story “A Gravestone Made of Wheat.” The Rake’s Cristina Córdova will moderate the latest installment of The Talk of the Stacks series, as the … Read more
Bronx born and bred, Richard Price is arguably the country’s grittiest version of a zeitgeist Renaissance man. Following his first two novels The New York Times Book Review dubbed him “The Fonzi of Literature,” which may or may not have been intended as a compliment. But if early Price seemed like a flyweight greaseball with … Read more
Sarah Ruhl, Sarah Ruhl, Sarah Ruhl. We’ve been writing up, and seeing, our fill of plays by this hotshot. Still, we’d be fools not to note the occasion of the regional premiere of Eurydice, the play that made Ruhl a certified superstar (thanks to last summer’s extended Off-Broadway run). This production marks Ten Thousand Things’ … Read more
Novelist Lionel Shriver has built a career around characters of intense complexity and raw connection, but The Post-Birthday World’s perturbed Irina, a London children’s book illustrator, is perhaps Shriver’s most thoroughly explored and convincingly drawn protagonist yet. To cheat or not to cheat? wonders Irina as she grapples with choosing between her devoted partner and … Read more
Some of the more recent products of painter Tiit Raid’s obsession, or “inspirational visual relationship,” with the pond outside his Wisconsin home can be seen this month at Thomas Barry Fine Arts (March 1–April 5) … A similar devotion is evident in photographer John Ratzloff’s work with the Anishinabe at the White Earth reservation (Bockley … Read more