Open Eye Theatre Announces Fall/Winter Season

Open Eye Theatre announces its Fall/Winter Season, featuring rowdy puppetry, a horrifying Halloween show on the roof at The Bakken Museum, a Mexican-American multimedia collaboration, masterful Indigenous storytelling, and a raucous musical version of A Christmas Carol! This season, audiences will see a thrilling array of original theatre, inventive puppetry, and world-class storytelling from local, national, and international artists. 

Producing Artistic Director Joel Sass officially took over the leadership helm at Open Eye in 2020 after Founder and Executive Director Susan Haas announced her departure from the organization. Since then he has successfully led Open Eye through the pandemic, commissioning and directing LOG JAM! A Paul Bunyan Musical Spectacular and HAIR BALL! A Bigfoot Musical Adventure on the roof of The Bakken Museum, and creating unique opportunities for audiences to engage with artists through outdoor spectacles, virtual performances, global online puppetry workshops, a wildly successful Driveway Tour, and PUPPET LAB residency and festival this year. In addition to creating new and exciting productions, his leadership focuses on supporting artists, fostering connections with community, and expanding the circle of those who call Open Eye a creative home.

FULL MOON PUPPET SHOW, October 21 – 23

A rowdy puppet cabaret during the full moon! Join us under the full moon for an adult, rowdy puppet cabaret. Featuring performances by some of the most innovative Twin Cities puppetry artists and live music between acts! Since 2008, FULL MOON PUPPET SHOW has been performing puppet slams throughout Minneapolis. This October, nominated artists will perform 10 minute original puppet shows to an audience encouraged to howl at the moon and cheer on each show!

HALLOWEEN @ The Bakken Museum, October 27 - 30

 Open Eye returns to The Bakken Museum for a third year of Halloween mayhem, this time with a multimedia spectacle conjured by Steve Ackerman and his team of puppet poltergeists. Ingredients in this witch’s cauldron include a gothic heavy metal band, puppet-animal sacrifice, arcane mystic rites, and comic demons summoned in a rock concert / seance / mockumentary that will delight fans of movies such as “This Is Spinal Tap” and “The Exorcist.”

SPEECHLESS | SIN PALABRAS, November 3 – 13

SPEECHLESS illuminates the extremes of both isolation and proximity between feuding neighbors who learn to overcome their conflicts and communicate across their divided community. The unique multimedia puppetry is performed without words to connect with audiences across language barriers and cultures.

Kling & Co Master Storyteller Series: BIRD BRAINED November 17 - 20

Beloved storyteller Dovie Thomason returns to Open Eye as part of Kevin Kling & Co’s Master Storyteller Series. One of the country’s most respected tale-tellers, Dovie Thomason combines her knowledge of Indigenous stories with contemporary observations in evenings of luminous storytelling, rich with tenderness and humor. Each performance is followed by an audience talk-back with the artist, hosted by Kevin Kling.

SCROOGE IN ROUGE, December 1 - 23

The Royal Music Hall Variety Players' production of A Christmas Carol is in a pickle after seventeen members of the company suddenly fall ill. This leaves the three remaining members to plow on (so to speak) through a musical performance of the Dickens classic. Expect missed cues, unfamiliar characters, and costume mishaps aplenty. With cheeky puns and bawdy songs, this quick-change, cross-dressing version of the Christmas tale is a hilarious holiday treat!

The return of PUPPET LAB this fall

Following a sold out relaunch during the PUPPET LAB Festival this year, and continuing under the leadership of co-artistic directors Oanh Vu and Rebekah Crisanta de Ybarra, we will soon announce a call for applications for our fall PUPPET LAB cohort of emerging artists. More info will be available soon at openeyetheatre.org/about-puppet-lab.

Tickets

Visit openeyetheatre.org for showtimes and tickets. A limited number of $10 Economic Accessibility tickets are available online for each performance. Patrons may also pay what they can at the door.

Location and Parking

Open Eye Figure Theatre. 506 East 24th St., Minneapolis, MN 55404 (Map) Open Eye is located 2 blocks south of Franklin Ave between Portland Ave and 35W. Park for free in the Lutheran Social Service lot at 24th and Portland.

The Forgotten Islands Beneath the Falls

Article by Michael Rainville, Jr.

Before Minneapolis turned into the Mill City and tamed the riverfront, there was a clump of three islands located downstream of St. Anthony Falls. Cataract, Spirit, and Upton Islands were limestone outcroppings left behind from the receding waterfall. While these islands were not large, like Hennepin and Nicollet Islands, that did not stop early settlers and entrepreneurs from attempting to start up businesses on these river islands.

Light pole powered by the first hydroelectric plant in the US.The first of these islands, Upton, was located immediately downriver of the falls, roughly where the northern portion of the Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam lies today. The island’s claim to fame is that it was home to the first hydroelectric power station in the United States. In 1881, a group of men, which included Joel Bassett and C. M. Loring, started the Minnesota Brush Electric Company. Once the company bought land on Upton Island, they built a small central power station with five generators that used power lines to connect to businesses along Washington Avenue. The island was completely removed by the Army Corps of Engineers when they built the upper lock and dam.

About 1,000 feet to the East and between Spirit and Hennepin Islands was Cataract Island. In 1855, the Lovejoy Brothers constructed a shingle factory, with a small wooden bridge that connected the island to Hennepin Island. This was done so their employees could have easier access to Cataract Island. Unfortunately, since the island was very small and in the middle of turbulent water, the sandstone located underneath the island eroded rapidly, and Cataract Island collapsed into the river in 1860.

Spirit Island, 1899

The most well-known of the three islands, Spirit Island, held high importance to the Dakota who called this part of Minnesota home well before pioneers settled the area. The mist of the falls would float over the majestic spruce trees that sprouted from the rocky surface, and to top it all off, bald eagles frequently nested on the island. However, once more and more people started moving to the area, the beauty of the island started to decrease. While the island never had any structures built upon it, Minneapolitans, or rather mill owners, valued the island even more than the previous two. For a few decades, the island turned into a Platteville Limestone quarry that provided building materials for many of the mills along the river. In 1882, the St. Anthony Water Power Company purchased the island, and they owned it up until 1957, when they ceded it to the federal government. This was necessary as Spirit Island was right where the lower entrance for the upper lock would eventually be constructed.

Both nature and humans have leveled the islands that once occupied the river at the base of St. Anthony Falls, but let us not forget the practical and spiritual role they once played for the many people that have called the Minneapolis riverfront their home.

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About Michael Rainville, Jr.

A 6th generation Minneapolitan, Michael Rainville Jr. received his B.A. in History from the University of St. Thomas, and is currently enrolled in their M.A. in Art History and Certificate in Museum Studies programs. Michael is also a historic interpreter and guide at Historic Fort Snelling at Bdote and a lead guide at Mobile Entertainment LLC, giving Segway tours of the Minneapolis riverfront for 7+ years. Contact: mrainvillejr@comcast.net. Click here for an interactive map of Michael's past articles.

Happy Labor Day! Meet Local Labor Leader, Sarah Beth Ryther

Article by Becky Fillinger, Photos provided by Sarah Beth Ryther 

Sarah Beth RytherOn Labor Day, our first thoughts are usually on end of summer celebrations. Let’s leave the party for a bit to focus on the real meaning of the holiday: Labor Day is a day to celebrate the achievement of workers. When Labor Day was first celebrated in the late nineteenth century working conditions in the U.S. were often poor and unsafe. Over the decades, organized labor brought about many changes to the workplace in terms of better wages, benefits, reasonable hours and safer working conditions. The work is not finished - labor leaders are still necessary today. Meet Sarah Beth Ryther, employee-organizer, instrumental in the union activity at the Mill District Trader Joe’s. We talked to her about the process of organizing at the store and the amazing energy around unionizing in the country today.

Q:  You mentioned in an interview in early August that there is a “wonderful union energy in our country right now.” Can you tell us more about this notion? 

A:  This year, there’s been a 58% increase in union representation petitions received by the National Board of Labor Relations, and we’ve all heard about the historic wins at Amazon and Starbucks. A multitude of factors - layoffs during the pandemic, inflation, dissatisfaction with workplace culture - have made workers increasingly willing to search for outside solutions. Ultimately, worker dissatisfaction is not occurring in a vacuum; in the past few years, there’s been a larger national conversation about what work means to us culturally and as a value. The pandemic forced many of us to examine the place work holds in our lives. For discouraged workers, unionization feels like a ready-made solution. While unions were perhaps unfashionable five years ago, most everybody knows somebody who is in a union and has benefited from the larger protections unions can provide. 

Q:  As a leader, you’ve done your homework – you’ve communicated with other young union leaders, you’ve met with other unions in the area to learn best practices (nurses, educators, craftspeople. etc.) - and formed strong bonds with your co-workers. Could you tell our readers about this groundwork that you did? Could you see yourself taking on a broader national role to share these learnings if the union movement sprouts in other Trader Joe’s locations? 

A:  For the organizers at our store, it felt intuitive to use trust as a baseline in our union drive. We were committed to having ongoing conversations with each other about what unionization might ultimately mean for every one of us. We wanted our coworkers to know that our relationships with them were far more important than Trader Joe’s or any union, and we repeated this sentiment often. We felt unionizing was the best option to make daily life better for people we care about, but we made sure to let everyone know that if at any point during the drive, we no longer felt it was the right move for us collectively, we would pull out.

We’d encourage other folks looking to unionize their workplaces to do the same: get to know the people around you. The more you know about someone’s life - their passions, values, fears and worries - the better you’ll be able to understand how they can benefit from the worker’s movement.

Personally, I’m very excited to be part of the beginning of such an important national conversation. I’m energized by the possibility of Trader Joe’s United as a presence in many stores with similar concerns across the country, and I’m committed to (slowly and surely) helping make that happen! 

Trader Joe’s United public outreach in the Mill District. 

Trader Joe’s United organizing and community outreach at Gold Medal Park.

Q:  Your Trader Joe's store is located in a densely populated urban area in the Mill District – what safety concerns are on the mind of you and your fellow crew members who voted for the union?

A:  We love Downtown East! We’re so proud of our neighborhood, and we feel so lucky to be close to the Guthrie and the Stone Arch Bridge. We also love our neighbors. That being said, emergency situations happen nearly every day, and we’ve asked for more comprehensive training from Trader Joe’s Corporate. Clearer procedures around fire alarms and tornado warnings come to mind. We’d also like access to de-escalation training and equipment that doesn’t take such a toll on our bodies. 

Q:  Did social media factor into the success of the vote to unionize in your store?  

A:  By the time we announced in June, we were confident that we would win our election. From June, when we went public, to August, when we voted, we used social media as a tool to communicate with our local and national community. Being part of the larger movement felt particularly important to us. Social media is a wonderful connector - it’s how we learned that the Trader Joe’s in Hadley, MA was organizing. It has also allowed us to have conversations with workers across the country who are in the middle of their own union drives or are interested in organizing. 

Q:  How may we follow your news? 

A: You can follow us on Twitter @TraderJoesUnite, and on Instagram @traderjoesunited. If you’d like to email us, our address is press@traderjoesunited.org.

Shopping Basket from the September 3rd Mill City Farmers Market

New in this week's shopping basket from the Mill City Farmers Market are butternut squash from Dawn2Dusk and Kimchi from Mhonpaj’s Garden. The outdoor Market is open Saturdays, 8a-1p thru September, and October hours are 9a-1p.

Catch the "Lettres de Gratitude: When Minnesota Fed the Children of Europe" Exhibit at the Mill City Museum thru September 11th

Article by Becky Fillinger 

David StevensTime is running out to see this free exhibit, Lettres de Gratitude: When Minnesota Fed the Children of Europe, at the Mill City Museum, 704 S Second Street.

We spoke to Site Manager, David Stevens, on what the exhibit is about and the relevance to today’s news. He provided us with a high-level list of reasons to visit the museum before this exhibit leaves on September 11, 2022.

• Lettres de Gratitude documents the work of famine relief in Europe during the First World War. 

• This work was led by American Herbert Hoover, who organized the Commission for Relief in Belgium, the largest humanitarian relief effort in history, which fed 100 million people in 45 countries between 1914 and 1923. 

• Mill City Museum was interested in hosting this exhibit because of the important role that Minnesota flour milling companies played in this effort.

• The exhibit is relevant and timely, as the global food system has been interrupted once again by conflict in Europe with the Russia-Ukraine war. 

• The exhibit features thank-you letters written by Belgian children to their benefactors. Mill City Museum has also supplemented these letters with flour sacks from our own collection that were embroidered by grateful Belgians and presented as gifts to members of the Commission for Relief in Belgium. 

• The exhibit was organized and produced by Global Minnesota, a non-profit, nonpartisan organization that connects Minnesotans to the world, and the world to Minnesota. 

• The exhibit is located in the museum’s central Mill Commons, and is free and open to the public during regular museum business hours through September 11, 2022.

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Visit the Mill City Museum over the Labor Day weekend!

Saturday 10:00 am–5:00 pm

Sunday 10:00 am–5:00 pm

Labor Day  10:00 am–4:00 pm

Third Avenue Bridge Project Reaches a Milestone as the Remaining Tower Cranes are Removed

Article and photos by Doug Verdier

A milestone was reached this past week in the Third Avenue Bridge rehabilitation project with the removal of the two remaining tower cranes that had been in place on the bridge since the early stages of the project. Each crane had to be disassembled and lowered to the bridge surface where the sections were loaded onto flat bed trucks to be removed from the job site. The whole operation took most of four days to accomplish.

The photos below show the various elements of the two cranes being removed one at a time from the towers and lowered by another crane (the yellow one). Anyone watching the operation had to be impressed by the skill and precision of the workers, especially when they were climbing around on the cranes to detach each section from the others and connect the cables from the other crane that would safely lower each section. The workers on the ground also had to ensure that each piece being lowered was brought down precisely where it was, then detached from the crane and prepared for loading onto the awaiting flatbeds. The entire process was well orchestrated to keep the operation moving on schedule and, above all, safely.

The first crane to be disassembled was the one closest to the First Street end of the bridge. Here the front section has been removed and is being lowered by the yellow crane.

Another view of the front section coming down. While this is going on, the workers on top of the tower are starting to disconnect the rear section of the crane (the horizontal red portion with the flag on top) from the control unit. That will be the next piece to be removed and lowered.

Rear section is connected to cables for lowering it before final disconnection is made.

Rear section about to be lifted. Note the worker at the left end of the red section making sure the disconnection and separation goes smoothly.

Here comes the rear section of the first crane to the ground. Note the other tower crane to the right. It will be taken down the following day.

The crane operator’s cabin is next to be removed from the tower and lowered.

Workers beginning to prepare sections of the tower to be removed. The horizontal section of the second tower crane can be seen to the right of the tower being worked on.

This is the second (and last of the original four) crane being disassembled and lowered. Cab of flatbed truck can be seen on the bridge awaiting the sections of the crane as they are brought down. Several flatbed trucks were required to transport all the various section of the cranes as they were taken apart.

The rear section of the crane coming down. The red front section can be seen laying on the bridge. It will be disassembled into sections that can be transported off site.

Almost there! Once on the ground, the “ALL” signage and other elements will be removed before the remaining section will be prepared to be loaded onto flatbed truck transport.

Pieces of the tower being placed on flatbed. Just two vertical sections remain standing.

The last tower section is on the ground.

A closer look at the last tower section before it is laid down in preparation for loading onto the flatbed.

Fall Fashion Check-in with Queen Anna House of Fashion

Article by Becky Fillinger

Nicole JenningsFall is right around the corner. We have all heard that hard and fast fashion rules no longer apply (no white after Labor Day, don’t mix silver and gold jewelry, etc.). Are you curious as to what’s trendy and timeless for the new season? We spoke with local fashion expert, Nicole Jennings, owner of Queen Anna House of Fashion for advice. When interviewed by CBS News in 2017, she said, "When people walk through the doors of Queen Anna, they will experience a sense of freshness.”

Our question - Please tell us the Fall 2022 Fall Fashion Trends that you are seeing and how may we find them at your North Loop shop, Queen Anna?  Here’s what she had to say:

Trends may come and go, but timelessness is forever. Finding key trends that will allow you to wear them into style perpetuity is essential in reducing the amount of money you spend on clothing each year as well as reducing the harmful impact that fashion has on our planet. Investing in quality pieces will allow for your style to be on point each and every season without breaking the bank or the back of Mother Nature.

Rebecca Allen Nude Loafer

Trendy + Timeless Accessory Capsule Pieces

- Ballet Flats + Loafers

- Multi-Purpose Handbag

- Hoop Earrings

- Classic Belt

Moon River Cutout Sweater

Trendy Fall Staples

- Chunky Knit Sweater

- Denim Jeans

- White Top

- Leather Jacket

- Blazer

- Slip Dress

Come to my shop at 109 N. Second Street in the North Loop and we’ll dress you in what is comfortable for you and decidedly fashionable.

Thank you, Nicole! We’ll see you soon and thanks for the advice.