Art Hounds: Glowing puppets, a haunted theater and Midwest folk music

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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Puppetry meets science

Musician Greg Herriges of Minneapolis recommends a date night or family trip to see Z Puppets Rosenschnoz’s performance of “Cellula.”

The show combines blacklight puppetry and live a capella music by improv vocalists Mankwe Ndosi and Libby Turner, zooming in on a story that takes place at the cellular level.

Performances take place at Sabathani Community Center in Minneapolis. Showtimes are Thursday at 5:30 p.m., Friday at 7 p.m. and Saturday at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. The show is recommended for ages 5 and up.

Microscope activity stations will be available 30 minutes before each show.

Greg says: It takes the world that you might see in a microscope and brings it to glow-in-the-dark life. It is educational, mesmerizing, funny.

The live music by Mankwe and Libby is somewhat improv-based, I believe, but it also includes intertwined melodies and sound effects to create just beautiful soundscape to this great fusion of art and science.

— Greg Herriges

A haunted Winona theater show

Writer and playwright Kathleen Kenney Peterson of Winona plans to get into the Halloween spirit by attending “Mallory’s Ghost,” an original ghost story and murder mystery set in a haunted theater.

The play involves three heiresses and a ghost with something to say.

It’s written and produced by Margaret Shaw Johnson of Winona, who has written several plays and a book inspired by local hauntings. The show runs Friday, Oct. 24, through Sunday, Nov. 2. Tickets are available through the Great River Shakespeare Festival.

Kenney Peterson is also excited about the venue.

Kathleen says: The Historic Masonic Theatre here in Winona has been closed for two years for renovations, and this play will be the first opportunity the public has to be in the building for over two years!

— Kathleen Kenney Peterson

Polka, anyone?

Folk musician Sarah Larsson of Minneapolis plans to see the Upper Midwest Folk Fiddlers perform at Tapestry Folkdance Center in Minneapolis, Thursday at 7 p.m.

Expect to hear — and dance to, if you choose — polkas, schottisches, waltzes and other traditional tunes.

Sarah says: I think maybe a lot of people know about folk music from Appalachia or from the American South. But turns out, of course, here in the Upper Midwest — Minnesota, Wisconsin, the Dakotas — there's folk music, too, that comes from the early 20th century and the middle of the 19th century.

What this group considers folk music from this region is all the music of different immigrants from Europe during that era, as well as Indigenous communities.

— Sarah Larsson