The last great staging of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” had Patrick Stewart commanding the Guthrie Stage for hours on end, and now the Jungle Theater’s Bain Boehlke aims to generate the same electricity with Guthrie regular Stephen Yoakam opposite Michelle Barber. The play opens April 23.
Get to the Regis Center for Art on the University of Minnesota’s Minneapolis campus by April 22 to see some of the most inventive art in recent memory, created by graduating MFA students. Worth the trip are the six handmade canvas tents (available for checkout!) made by Peter Haakon Thompson, instigator of the annual Art Shanty project on Medicine Lake. Check them out at Tentservices.org.
Also on April 22, the new Chicago Arts Fire Center (home of art created by heat and flame) is holding a fundraiser from 6 to 9 p.m. with a lineup of food (by Pepito’s) and music (by jazz vocalist Charmin Michelle and Cajun kings Kevin Anthony and the Twin City Playboys), as well as a short documentary on the making the venue itself. Minimum donation requested is $25.
The short film “Ana’s Playground,” winning kudos on its spring tour of film festivals, surfaces on April 22 for a screening at the St. Anthony Main Theater as part of the Mpls-St. Paul International Film Festival. The movie was shot on the West Bank of Minneapolis but is set in an unnamed war-torn country and begins when a soccer ball is kicked into a sniper zone and an 11-year-old girl is sent to retrieve it.
“Dead Man’s Cell Phone” is selling out the Park Square Theatre with its strong cast, including Carolyn Pool and Linda Kelsey, and its intriguing premise: a guy croaks at a restaurant and the cell phone on his table won’t stop ringing. When a woman answers, her introverted life turns inside out, just the sort of edgy, contemporary story that’s made playwright Sarah Ruhl into one of the country’s hottest. The show continues through May 2.
The Rockstar Storytellers, featuring Amy Salloway, Mike Fotis, and other comedic actors, return to the Bryant-Lake Bowl April 25 with special guest John Jodzio, author of the wonderfully quirky short-story collection If You Lived Here You’d Already Be Home.
Tapes ‘n’ Tapes, Chris Koza, and writer Geoff Herbach join the Radio Happy Hour, featuring Herbach’s Lit 6 co-founder Sam Osterhout, at the Cedar Cultural Center on April 24 at 9:30 p.m.
