Art Hounds: Clown comedy, climate change on canvas and Mozart outdoors

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

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A clown’s farewell at the Fringe

The Minnesota Fringe Festival continues through Sunday, Aug. 10, with nearly 100 shows presented in 90-minute intervals at theaters around the Twin Cities.

Phillip Schramm, an improviser and theater maker in Minneapolis, particularly recommends seeing “Clown Funeral” at Theatre in the Round in Minneapolis, Saturday at 1 p.m. The show is billed as appropriate for ages 12–15 and up.

“The funeral is about Bongo, a clown that has passed away, and there are four other clowns that are there to kind of honor his memory, and it goes the way you would think,” Schramm says.

“It's a clown show. So there are bits of physical comedy, of just them assembling the coffin. There's word play. There's one clown that really only speaks through art. Everything you would want in a clowning show is in ‘Clown Funeral.’”

One delightful touch, Schramm says, is red clown noses at the entry that audience members can take and wear. Because the theater is in the round, you can see the audience members wearing red clown noses throughout the show.

Painting the urgency of climate change

Suzie Marty, gallery curator of Everett & Charlie in Minneapolis, recommends “2°C,” a joint exhibit by painters Drevis Hager of Minneapolis and Mark Granlund of Red Wing that focuses on climate change. The exhibit runs through Saturday, Aug. 9 at the Hamilton Gallery in Minneapolis.

Marty called the paintings moving and beautiful, even as they drive home the seriousness of climate change. She pointed toward Granlund’s paintings with unusual materials, including tar, and his surprising pairings, such as a series of portraits of CEOs of oil companies overlaid on landscape paintings.

Hager paints representational landscapes as well as abstracts that invoke wildfires and melting ice caps, as in the darkly humored title “Oh Oh, There Goes Greenland.”

Mozart under the summer sky

Choral singer Beth Gusenius of Minneapolis caught a preview performance of Mixed Precipitation’s summer outdoor opera, this year an adaptation of Mozart’s “1781 Idomeneo, re di Creta (King of Crete).”

This abridged version, first staged by the company in 2012, is called “The Return of King Idomeneo.” It blends Mozart’s arias with other musical styles, including doo-wop.

Next week, performances will be in Ely (Wed., Aug. 13), Hovland (Aug. 15), Grand Marais (Aug. 16), and Finland (Aug. 17). The run continues through Sept. 14 at outdoor locations across the state. It is free and open to all ages, with a suggested donation.

“It's a really fun performance. I think it's one of those that's going to convert people who wouldn't necessarily otherwise go to the opera. They do such an amazing job bringing the story to life,” Gusenius says.