2016
S E A S O N
Opening Our 2016 season is chock full of incredible art and entertainment. The Southern brings dance, theatre, and music to the stage in a unique blend of genres and styles all in our intimate 165 seat house. With over 229 nights of performance from over 25 companies, it is our most ambitious season to date. With the launch of the ARTshare program in 2015, members are taking advantage of this diverse array of performances when they want, as many times as they want. At the Southern we believe that seeing the performing arts should be as simple as showing up and giving your name. If you aren’t a member yet we encourage you to consider adding yourself to our community of 350 members. Nearly all of the art on our stage is local, created by artists who live and work in the Twin Cities. From playwrights to choreographers, dancers to actors, directors to designers, the faces and voices of the Southern are made up of Twin Cities denizens who bring their stories to our stage to share with you. We hope you enjoy our 2016 season whether you see a single show from your favorite company or try out a plethora of new work from our roster with an ARTshare membership. There is so much to enjoy in 2016. Welcome BACK to the Southern. - Damon Runnals, the Southern Theater Staff, and the resident and guest resident companies.
The Southern’s Mission is to foster a community of exceptional artists.
Main Street School of Performing Arts Family Unit
Feb 5—7 16—19 27 & 28 Tues—Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm Family Unit is a high energy original ensemble work based in the not too distant future. After years in seclusion, a family must navigate a new and unfamiliar crisis ridden world. Loyalties are tested, bonds are made, limits are broken as we discover what it means to be family, and explore the balance between our values and our survival.
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Minneapolis Music Company A Fiddler’s Tale
Mon • 7pm & 9pm
Feb 22
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Savage Umbrella June
Feb 12—14 20 & 21 23—26
Tues—Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm
Set in pre-Stonewall America, June explores the roles we play and the secrets we hide. As McCarthyism abounds and the burgeoning queer social scene picks up steam, an ensemble of women grappling with fear, love, and identity explore what it means to be seen—by themselves, by each other, and by a society that may not be ready to see them as they are. Audiences described the 2014 work-in-progress as mysterious, human, incisive, daring, magnetic, and “a crisp delight / a tangy surprise”. Savage Umbrella uses music, movement, and text to dig even further into themes of privilege, gender roles, and sexual identity turning the traditional mid-century American narrative on it’s head.
A fiddler, Beatrice Connors, sells her music (her soul) to the devil, Bubba Z. Beals, a record company executive, in exchange for a successful music career. Music by Wynton Marsalis, Libretto by Stanley Crouch, Misha Santora conducting
Theatre Novi Most The Seagull
Tues—Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm
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Mar 4—6 15—18 26 & 27
Theatre Novi Most presents the iconic Russian classic by Anton Chekhov about love, art and the power and meaning of symbols, The Seagull. This production staged by Russian director Vladimir Rovinsky, disengagles the play from the chiches of samovars, corsets, and the “mysterious Russian soul” and instead addresses our contemporary world of disconnection and the desperate longing for love that is our seething, vibrating underbelly. In this existential and darkly humorous mediation on the stakes of living life and making art in a world where we are never more alone than when we are together, Theatre Novi Most reminds us that Chekhov is supremely one of us.
Tues—Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm
Four Minneapolis-based choreographers unite to create and curate original work, providing a look into the broad range of the Minnesota dance community. Kaleena Miller Dance will present Here Now, a new work by the company from March 11—13. Beginning March 19 is a limited run of selected works from the community, curated by Pramila Vasudevan and Justin Jones. And on March 23 - 25 Gadu presents ODORI-BA Dancing Places. Please join us as we celebrate the growth of this choreographic generation.
ARENA Dances Apr 1—3 12—15 23 & 24
TWITCH
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Tues—Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm
TWITCH is part of the 18 month celebration of Mathew Janczewski’s ARENA Dances’ vibrant 20-year history. Featuring selected works from the company’s innovative repertoire and world premiere quartet, Picturing That Day (commissioned by the Kevin J. Mossier Foundation) inspired by the artwork of Jim Hodges, cruise ship entertainment, and the music of Irving Berlin, Red Nichols, and more. The bill includes the avantgarde quintet Les Petites Choses to the music of Katerine, complete with vacuous facial expressions and the remount of ARENA’s 1997 work, TWITCH: The Story of a life unlived, a semi-autobiographical rompous dance-theater work set to 18th century organ music. Special guest artists from ARENA’s history will join in this performance in the midst of celebrating 20 years.
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Gadu Justin Jones Kaleena Miller Pramila Vasudevan
Kaleena Miller Dance Curated by Justin Jones & Pramila Vasudevan Gadu
Mar 11—13 19* & 20 23—25
*Note: Only 7:30pm Performance
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Four Humors Theater We Gotta Cheer Up Gary
Tues—Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm
Apr 8—10 16 & 17 19—22
Thanks for purchasing the UltimateCheerUp® package from Four Humors, LLC. When it comes to being professionally cheered up, we know you have lots of options, so thanks for choosing us to do it right. With more than 10 years of professional cheer up experience, we guarantee 100% satisfaction!
Swandive Theatre Kid Simple: A Radio Play In The Flesh
Tues—Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm
Moll, a girl who invents things, wins the science fair with a machine for hearing sounds that can’t be heard. But when a shapeshifting Mercenary steals the invention (and her heart), she must embark on a quest to save noise as we know it. Accompanied by the last boy virgin in the eleventh grade, Moll crosses chasms and rafts rivers into a world where sound is always more than what meets the ear.
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Apr 29—May 1 May 10—13 21 & 22
Live Action Set
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The Sparrow
May 6—8 14 & 15 17—20
Tues—Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm
Sea-weary sailors regard the arrival of a sparrow as the harbinger of a journey’s end. With it, momentum recycles, and a new journey begins. The Sparrow celebrates a world of infinite possibilities as it takes hold of joy by the jowls in this new portrait of explosive expression by genre-blurring Live Action Set.
Performance Minded People Support The Arts In the course of serving people Courtyard will donate 10% of your food and beverage purchases back to the Southern Theater helping to support today’s local performing community.
Join us in the
Bistro before or after a performance, show your playbill and we will take care of the rest.
“Arts are essential to a community’s well-being, because they remind us that life has a higher purpose than the mundane” ~ Ron Zeigler.
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Red Bird Theatre Buried Child
Red Bird Theatre presents Sam Shepard’s Buired Child directed by Artistic Director, Genevieve Bennett. The mission of Red Bird Theatre is to produce plays that expose life’s transcendent moments. It’s inaugural production, Buried Child, examines the violent dysfunction of a Midwestern family with a dark secret.The arrival of an estranged son breaks the patterns of lies, and life and death hang in the balance as the truth begins to take root. Featuring Twin Cities favorites: Terry Hempleman*, Paul de Cordova*, Brian Goranson, Leif Jurgensen, Sam Pearson and Charlotte Calvert. *Members of Actor’s Equity
Transatlantic Love Affair Ballad of the Pale Fisherman
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Jun 3—5 11 & 12 14—17 Tues—Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm
What happens when a fisherman falls in love with a woman who happens to be a seal? Faced with the dueling calls of land and sea, which will she choose? Inspired by the folktale of the selkie, Ballad of the Pale Fisherman is a story of love and loss that is playful and heartbreaking in equal measure. Using song and movement to portray fisherman and sea creatures, curmudgeonly storytellers and sweeping landscapes, Transatlantic Love Affair creates a world that is magical, moving, and heartfelt in this Ivey Award-winning production.
May 27—29 Jun 7—10 18 & 19
Tues—Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm
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Dance and Other Behaviors The Beginning of Things
Jun 23—26
Thur & Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm
Experience a world that is tangled, chaotic, and intensely personal. Dance and Other Behaviors weaves dynamic physicality with experimental storytelling to create a collection of visually arresting narratives. The Beginning of Things dwells where our minds create meaning from mystery, and includes a solo work inspired by Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.
Joe Horton A Hill In Natchez
Thur & Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm
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Jul 14—17
Beautiful and unsettling, A Hill in Natchez is a meditation on the strange gravity of power that transforms a scenic hill into a bazaar where people stroll idly past humans for sale. Through a hallucinatory mix of music, visuals, and dance, director Joe Horton tells the story of a woman and man caught in this gravity and the myriad ways they are touched by power. Seen through their eyes, the New World is an ever-evolving mosaic of symbols, violent and seductive, dictating laws they are bound by yet can’t quite understand. Like other works in the rich tradition of surrealism, the abstract world of A Hill in Natchez is deeply analogous to our own.
Eclectic Edge Ensemble and Artistic Director Karis Sloss present an evening of jazz dance sure to make you want to move! Accompanied by newly composed music, the evening will include concert works by Sloss, guest choreographers, and a preview of Sloss’ future evening length work - an adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Not to be missed, this preview is a story filled with magic, mystery, betrayal, and...a monkey!
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Eclectic Edge Ensemble First Nights of a Foot Flight!
Jul 21—24
Thur & Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm
Southern Theater Staff Damon Runnals - Executive Director Taylor Jensen - Community Relations Manager Jamie Schumacher - Development Director Jerod Greenisen - Digital Media Specialist Zach Halliwell - Web Master Galen Higgins - Graphic Design Dan Norman - Resident Photographer Board of Directors Mike Grosso - Chair Sheldon Wood - Vice Chair Eric Herron - Treasurer Leslie Ball Michelle Winchester Craig Espelien Jessica Herfurth Scott Rehovsky
The Southern Theater is a proud member of the West Bank Business Association
Season support provided by the following: Arts, ink
Town Hall Brewery
Ameriprise Financial
GrandMarc Minneapolis
Knock, inc
Heather West Public Relations
Legacy Amendment
Metropolitan Regional Arts Council
The Marbrook Foundation
S UPP ORTING ART, C ULTUR E AND COM MUNIT Y.
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Altered Esthetics Film Festival
Jul 27—29
Wed—Fri • 7:30pm
For over ten years Altered Esthetics (Ae) has exhibited artwork from over 500 artists. Ae’s largest program is the Ae Film Festival, an annual event dedicated to exploring the art of the moving image. Selected short films/videos expand the notion of what the moving image is and can be. The Southern’s lobbies will once again play host to the curated art shows of Ae. These rotating exhibitions feature artists from across the Twin Cities in print, paint, photo, and 3D mediums. We invite you to explore the walls of the Southern before or after a performance.
Rhythmically Speaking Aug 18—21
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Thur & Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm
Rhythmically Speaking welcomes you to fall whole-heartedly into the uniquely human experience of embodying rhythm! 2016 marks the eighth installment of our annual production featuring the work of local and national jazz and rhythm-driven choreographers whose work speaks to this idea.
Blue Water Theatre Company Tues—Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm
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Sep 2—4 10 & 11 13—16
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Sandbox Theatre 600 Years
Aug 26—28 Sep 6—9 17 & 18
Tues—Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm
What if humanity was inherently good? Sandbox steps 600 years into the future to tell the story of a world absent of murder and deceit. A world where extraordinary women journey across vast wildernesses of unprecedented danger to reconnect humanity, and save it from extinction.
Since its founding in 2007, Blue Water Theatre Company has grown into the premiere youth theatre organization in the Twin Cities with a primary focus on musical theatre. Featuring actors in grades 3 through college, Blue Water has produced over fifty shows including, most recently, Assassins, Little Shop of Horrors, Big Fish,The Drowsy Chaperone and Jekyll & Hyde.
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Theatre Forever The Venetian Twins
Tues—Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm Sep 23—25 Oct 4—7 15 & 16 Written in the mid 1700s, Carlo Goldoni’s timeless comedy tells the story of two estranged twins, Zanetto and Tonino, who arrive in town, both lovelorn, and on the same day, to win two separate hands in marriage. Staged in Theatre Forever’s vibrant, playful and irreverent style and drawing heavily from Italian Commedia dell’arte, this production, packed with more mistaken identities than you can shake a wet fish at, boat-loads of exquisite physical comedy and rapid-fire verbal play, promises to be an unforgettably hilarious evening of mayhem and stupidity.
Workhaus Collective
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Sep 30—Oct 2 Oct 8 & 9 11—14
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BodyCartography Project Oct 20—23
Tues—Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm
Workhaus Collective brings you the next generation of original scripts for the stage. Artistically-directed by Minnesota-based playwrights whose work has been produced at theaters large and small across the country, Workhaus is entering its tenth year and will be producing its 25th world premiere at the Southern.
Thur & Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm BodyCartography Project presents an evening of new solo works. We make dances to investigate embodiment and empathy, and provoke aliveness as part of our everyday experience.
Sign up today at benefactor.org/southern for a chance to be a secret tipper and give our money to your favorite artists!
A Brief History Located at Seven Corners in Minneapolis near the University of Minnesota’s West Bank campus, our intimate, 165-seat house serves as a leading and valued venue for eclectic, experimental and engaging work that appeals to diverse audiences. The Southern Theater opened its doors on March 1, 1910, offering a variety of entertainments. Following years as a garage, warehouse, antique shop, restaurant and vacancy, the Southern resumed its role as a theater when the Guthrie Theater renovated the space for use as a second stage. With the assistance of the Minneapolis Arts Commission, the Southern Theater Foundation emerged in its present, non-profit corporate structure in 1983. The Southern Theater provides a home for artists, giving them the freedom to focus on what matters most, their art. We add new value by fostering a community that serves the artist’s need for stability, for a sense of place, for the opportunity to experiment and as a resource to learn and grow. We offer audiences a unique experience that ignites their imaginations and expands their perspectives in an extraordinary historical theater.
Twin Cities Horror Festival Oct 27窶年ov 6
The Twin Cities Horror Festival is back at the Southern, and this 11 day long run of horror based dance and theater shows will bring the macabre to life. Join us to celebrate with the blood and gore festivities!
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Alternative Motion Project Nov 10—13
Thur & Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm
Known for its Move BIG style, Alternative Motion Project showcases an exciting range of new dance works featuring collaborations with several guest artists, musicians and choreographers alongside its 11 dynamic company members. This refreshing modern dance company thrills, inspires, and amazes with its artistry and a physicality that doesn’t quit.
They have a car in the garage, a chicken in the pot and a child on the way. But is that enough to make true love stick? Crazy Glue follows the tragicomic roller coaster of a couple’s romance as they move from the blossoming of first love through to the thornier terrain of married life. Inspired by the physical comedy of Buster Keaton and the madcap absurdity of Looney Tunes, Single Shoe Productions fuse clown, mime and dance into a universally accessible show that reveals the mad, messy, sticky side of love.
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Single Shoe Productions Crazy Glue
Nov 17—20
Thur & Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm
Hiponymous Different After This
Thur & Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm
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Dec 1—4
Al Taw’am S.H.E. In HerStory
Thur & Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm
Dec 8—11
A powerful and inspirational journey of hope, pain, self discovery, sisterhood, and growth. Told through Hip Hop Dance.... HERstory is what it truly means to know H.E.R.
Hiponymous’ signature choreography delivers simultaneously subconscious and overt approaches to unison and punctuation of movement through rhythm. They create unpredictable pockets in performance, where inventive impulse and phrasing bring a gritty utility to their storytelling. Tonal dramatic shifts roll through the body like mercury, dancing the range from humor to horror.
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Minnesota Dance Collaborative HoliDaydream
Thur & Fri • 7:30pm Sat • 2pm & 7:30pm Sun • 2pm
Dec 15—18
HoliDaydream is a festive tale of dance and drama told through the eyes of a young girl as she traverses the highs and lows of the holidays through a magical journey. Minnesota Dance Collaborative’s dynamic company showcases a multitude of dance styles and entertaining actors for a glamorous holiday experience.
The Sout hern Theat er Mai n Floor Plan (Ori gi nal Blueprint) 19 10
ARTshare Memberships: $18 a month for access to all applicable performances on the season $216 for a full year of access to all applicable performances on the season
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ARTshare members enjoy free admission to performances indicated by this icon.
Memberships are available for purchase at www.southerntheater.org
Tickets Ticket Prices General Admission $24 Students (with ID) $18 Tuesday Industry Nights: pick your price $0 - $24 ARTshare members: Free
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ARTshare shows are indicated by this icon
Box Office Info website: www.southerntheater.org
phone 24/7: 612.326.1811 On-site hours: 1 hour before all performances
Address
1420 Washington Ave S Minneapolis, MN 55454
Located blocks from the Green & Blue line, and multiple bus lines
Parking located around the corner, on the street, and surface lots on the south side of Washington
Thank You For Supporting The Arts!
1420 Washington Ave S Minneapolis, MN 55454
southerntheater.org