One story links a woman's words to the growth of a tree while another follows letters and diary entries from three generations of women during wartime. One tries to convince audience members to remember how much they loved nature when they were young and the other reminds viewers that it's OK when things don't happen exactly as planned.
These stories, combined with many other original pieces created by local and national artists, make up the 2008 Minnesota Fringe, a festival of live performances that captures drama, humor and everything in between.
"Minnesota's Fringe is a vibrant event and a great venue for people to experience new things," said Carol Flint-Kaliebe, an Edina artist performing at the 15th annual festival. "This is a terrific chance to showcase our work, get feedback and see what others are doing, too."
Co-creating an original piece that puts nature center stage and surrounds it with female energy and social change, Flint-Kaliebe explained that originally she wanted to do the production from inside a tree.
"Trees and nature are at the center of the piece as we weave our passage through life and transitions," she said. "With the extreme global change that is happening all around us, we wanted to concentrate on what is being lost at the same time."
"If a Tree Falls" combines poetry, monologues, storytelling, dramatic sketches and photographs that touch on women's lives in transition and link those uncertainties to nature. "The oldest living thing on earth is a tree and right now we are all going through major cultural change," Flint-Kaliebe said. "This is going on for the trees, as well."
Natural connections
Teaming up with Illinois artist Judy Adams (they met at a writer's workshop on the North Shore), Flint-Kaliebe hopes the audience will recall the love of nature most children have when they are young-and reclaim it. "We should be more aware of our environment and more sensitive to trees and our ecosystem," she said. "I want people to wake from their amnesia and leave the theater in a different state of consciousness than when they went in. I can't imagine anyone who didn't have a relationship with trees when they were young and we want them to bring them back to that state of mind."
After working on the piece for almost seven months, Adams said it was a great chance for her to connect with her daughter-and regain a bit of her lost youth. "By watching my daughter grow up, I've been able to reconnect with parts of my youth that I hadn't thought of for years," Adams said. "And writing this piece has helped with that, as well. We've learned through our research how little time kids today are spending outside and that means we are losing our link with nature. I hope that our production provokes and evokes a connection with the natural world and, hopefully, audience members will learn something. As well as be entertained, of course."
Adams joins Flint-Kaliebe on stage to perform "If a Tree Falls." "I hope people leave our show with the feeling that there is an incredible connection between people and nature in this world and that we should continue to learn and grow as women and as humans," she said.
A woman's war
Learning from each other through three generations is the common thread that ties together "My War: From Bismarck to Britain and Back," a play that spotlights the power of the written word and the magic of making things up as we go along. "Our story focuses on how women working during war had to deal with things changing quickly," said Minneapolis resident Ann Kilgore Reay, one of the play's creators. "Women during that time were not sure how things were going to turn out so they had to make it up as they went along, and their losses were so great. But our story tells audiences that you can endure loss and you don't have to lose your heart."
Told through diary entries and letters from three generations of women who found they had more in common then first realized, "My War" features three female voices: a baby boomer (played by Dorothy Cleveland), her mother (Trautner) and her grandmother (Reay). "This is an intergenerational story, a mother/daughter story, a "Greatest Generation" story and a women's voices story," said Richfield resident and co-creator Sara Boyle Trautner. "There is so much rich material here that we knew we had to do something with it. These stories are very compelling for us and for the audience."
Reay portrays the grandmother in the piece which only seems right since her own grandma was her character's real-life best friend. "We want to remind people of the importance of the written word," she said. "Taking time to write things down is one way to hang on to our past.
"It was truly an act of friendship to work on this play," Reay said.
If You Go What: If a Tree Falls
When/Where: Thurs, July 31, 10:00 p.m., Sat.,
Aug. 2, 7:00 p.m., Sun., Aug. 3, 5:30 p.m., Thurs., Aug. 7, 8:30 p.m., Sat., Aug. 9, 4:00 p.m. Intermedia Arts, 2822 Lyndale Ave. S., Mpls.
Cost: $10/students and seniors, $12/adults,
$10/students and seniors, $5/children, plus a Fringe button.
What: My War
When/Where: Sun., Aug. 3, 2:30 p.m., Tues.,
Aug. 5, 5:30 p.m., Wed., Aug. 6, 8:30 p.m, Fri., Aug. 8, 10:00 p.m., Sun., Aug. 10, 1:00 p.m. Theatre de la Jeune Lune, 105 1st St. N., Mpls.
Cost: $10/students and seniors, $12/adults,
$10/students and seniors, $5/children, plus a Fringe button.
