Category Archives: CityLife

See this play. Seriously.

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Little Shop of Horrors as done by 10,000 Things.

Here's what The Rake says:

A few months back, it was asserted in the pages of this magazine that Ten Thousand Things has great taste in literature. We stand by that assessment — even now, as the company readies a production of an American musical that to some would appear gauche. The Little Shop story line is about as absurd as it gets. (It is, after all, a spoof of a '60s B-movie.) But the cult musical boasts an irresistible bebop score as well as a lovable cast of characters. In the hands of Ten Thousand Things artistic director Michelle Hensley, these elements get stripped down to expose their underlying darkness. What's more, a fine group of local character actors inject nuance into what is normally a big-voiced Broadway-style production. Writer, actor, improviser and all-around funny-man Jim Lichtscheidl plays geeky Seymour. Kate Eifrig, fresh off her run as Janis Joplin in Love, Janis, plays Audrey. One of the Twin Towns' preeminent physical comics, Luverne Seifert, appears as the evil Orin Scrivello, DDS. Hensley has a surprise in store for the character of Audrey II, the blood-feeding plant; she isn't giving any specifics, but teases: “It'll be VERY different; it won't be the traditional Audrey” (i.e., no giant, molded-foam puppet growling “Feed me, Seymour.”).

Here's what PF Hyper says .

Here's where you make a reservation.

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Must See! 10,000 Things Little Shop of Horrors

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Those of you following along saw me rave about Ten Thousand Things theater last fall when they opened their season with The Merchant of Venice. They followed that up with Lorca’s Blood Wedding in March and they’ve just opened the musical Little Shop of Horrors. Yes. A musical. They do them well.

The actors on the stage at a TTT production are the same ones you see at the Guthrie, Jeune Lune, and the other hot venues in the Twin Cities. The difference is the sets (virtually none), the script—pared down to the basics because they often perform for groups that haven’t seen much theater, and the lighting—whatever the room lighting happens to be. The groups they perform for are prison inmates, the homeless, and the disabled.

They do a bunch of free performances at the social venues that they serve so there really is no excuse to miss them. You do need reservations. Check the schedule. (Sorry, they won’t let you check out the prison shows but you can see them free at places like St. Stephen’s Community Center and the Dorothy Day Center.)

They also have paid performances in Minneapolis on June 15-17 and 22-24. Tickets are $20.

Check the 10,000 Things site.

Bonus Link. American Theater article on 10,000 Things.

Minnebar Two

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Minnesota’s second Minnebar Unconference will take place April 21 in St. Paul’s Lowertown at the Railroader Building, 235 E. Sixth St. Sign up at the wiki.

We were crowded last year at Catalyst Studio (thank you Catalyst!). The Railroader has more room and two floors.

No audience or presenters at an unconference, just participants and discussion leaders. List sessions you’re interested in both leading and attending at the wiki.

Watch for an April 20 icebreaker. Last year it was at Acadia and it gets my vote for this year too.

Check out the Minnebar06 archive.

via Ben

Wireless in Minneapolis

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The new Wi-Fi mesh in Minneapolis is slowly making its way across the city. I live in the pilot area so I’ve had a chance to play with it since July. My access ended recently as USI Wireless (the new US Internet entity for the wireless deployment) began selling accounts in the pilot area.

If you are in the Seward Neighborhood area (around 24th Ave. S. & Franklin), you can check out the USI “Minneapolis Portal” login page. Check for USI Wireless where your network SSIDs are listed. Load a new browser page (or restart the browser in some instances) and you should be at the portal where you can pay $9.95 for a day of wireless browsing (or $3.95 for 15 minutes – yikes!). (I don’t know if you can actually pay-&-browse yet but the technology is there.)

If you live in the Seward area, you can also subscribe to the system for $14.95/month (1-3Mbps) or $24.95/month (3-6Mbps). The subscription service is in place as they sent out a mailing a while back.

A comfortable place for wireless exploration would be the 2nd Moon Coffee Shop at 2225 East Franklin Avenue. You should be able to see the USI Wireless network there and you can browse the Web via the free wireless at 2nd Moon if you don’t want to pay USI for some browsing time.

Here is a map of the Wi-Fi access points in the Seward Neighborhood. As far as I know, this is the only accurate map. The one the City released last year was pre-deployment of the antennas and is almost completely off.

The downtown Minneapolis area is supposed to have access soon or maybe it’s there already. Anyone downtown seeing the network?

The Official Minneapolis Wi-Fi Portal Page has all sorts of links to City information. I don’t think any of the links work yet. Eventually, this page will serve as a Walled (or Civic) Garden, allowing anyone with a Wi-Fi connection free access to City and neighborhood information. What will be available in the Garden is under discussion and if you have ideas, please let me know as I’m on the committee that is working on this. (Comments are always best to keep a discussion going but if you’re shy, email me at pfhyper [@] gmail DOT com.)

One idea put forth by Michael Maranda, a community activist out of Chicago, is that all .gov, .edu, and .org should be made available. His reasoning is that this will serve as a free access system for low income users who can’t afford a monthly fee. It will also be a somewhat “safe” Internet to allow Net Newbies to get their feet wet.

(Please don’t bring up the “free Internet for all” discussion. I agree with that but it ain’t going to happen here in the near future. The best we can do is increase our garden space as much as possible.)