Theater maker Kayla Hambek is looking forward to seeing the play “The Pavilion” at the Lyric Arts Main Street Stage in Anoka, Minn. Billed as “Our Town” for contemporary audiences, the play follows Peter and Kari, who were nominated as the cutest couple in high school, as they encounter each other again at their 20-year high school reunion. It’s a story of love and loss, and how the decisions we make affect others’ lives. Directed by Jake Sung-Guk Sullivan, “The Pavilion” is an intimate...

Artist and educator Preston Drum of Burnsville recommends a visit to the Rochester Art Center.  He highlights two solo shows by Minneapolis College of Art and Design graduates, Roshan Ganu and Ivonne Yáñez.  Roshan Ganu’s show “जत्रा (Ja-tra) : A Feeling At The Beginning Of Time” is one large artwork in a space that is made up of various mirrors, projections and animation. It’s a multi-sensory installation, with sounds of vendor calls and sung prayers. जत्रा’ (“ja-tra”) is a Marathi word for...

Pamela Ziegenhagen-Shefland of Minnetonka, Minn., is an animation features editor and textile artist. Recently, she made the trip to the Owatonna Center for the Arts, where she marveled at the multi-sensory, interactive installation that is “Legacy Dream Space.” The exhibit was created by composer Craig Harris and visual artist Candy Kuehn, in collaboration with Kym Longhi and Jim Peitzman. Photographs line the walls, as do scrims, which are overlaid with video of exhibit visitors. Two...

Queen Drea of St. Paul describes herself as a sound alchemist. She loves the innovative, community-centered performances of Ananya Dance Theatre. The theme for this fall’s performance is processionals, which can both celebrate life and disrupt its flow when they take the form of protests. Ananya Dance Theater investigated its theme by performing several processionals in the Twin Cities this summer; Queen Drea had the opportunity to be involved with one during the George Floyd memorial...

Katie Carter is an art lover and former arts reporter for Northern Community Radio. Recently, she made the drive to the Edge Center for the Arts in Bigfork, Minn., where she says she was blown away by Terry Leinbach’s show “Wonder.” The show includes 39 large, abstract paintings, which Carter calls “a feast of texture and color” that offers layered imagery whose meaning and emotion seemed to evolve the longer she looked. Leinbach leaves room for this wonder-led interpretation: she numbers...

Theater maker Grant Sorenson of Minneapolis is excited about the return of a unique theater project being staged at Norway House in Minneapolis. Local creative Kurt Engh adapted the Norwegian author Erlend Loe’s cult novel “Naïve. Super” into a one-person play where — here’s the twist — the show will be performed by a different actor each night. The play is about a 25-year-old who one day realizes they aren’t happy with their life. Through a series of small changes and discoveries, they...

Luverne Seifert is a Twin Cities actor and acting teacher. He recommends going to see “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” from Dark & Stormy Productions.In this edgy production, set at Marcia Blaine School for Girls in 1930s Scotland, the lessons are less about math and reading than they are about love and sex. “It’s a very provocative play,” Seifert said. “And at times I think your jaw will drop.” The cast consists of University of Minnesota students making their professional stage...

Meggie Moench is a Minneapolis-based musician and dancer who is excited to attend 10th Wave Chamber Collective’s upcoming event “At Dusk: Outdoor Chamber Music Concert Series.” “I love listening to local live music in Minneapolis, and 10th Wave Chamber Collective is a group whose performances I always make sure to see,” Moench said. This particular concert series is extra special, she said, because it features all BIPOC, contemporary composers with a modern flair playing outside in...

Former St. Paul art critic Diane Hellekson came out of retirement to rave about Kathryn Nobbe’s exhibition “Indelible Vestiges: Mother, Her Mother, Me.” The exhibition attempts to capture the the blurred reality between the present and past through memory through a vareity of multimedia elements. “There’s old shoes that look like little ghosts walking alongside the gallery.” Hellekson said. “Indelible Vesitages” is open through Sept. 9 at Form + Content Gallery at 210 Second St. N. in...

Nat El-Hai describes herself as a Minneapolis writer, organizer and lesbian commentator. She’s looking forward to the latest Southside Shtetl — an outdoor Jewish makers market that celebrates the local Jewish community and includes everything from pottery to political education. Plus: Anyone can join in the klezmer jam session from 6-8 p.m. “This month’s event is really grounded in the Jewish diaspora,” El-Hai said. “You’re not going to find any other Jewish event in Minneapolis like...

Ian Francis Lah is an actor and the executive artistic director for the Northern Lakes Art Association in Ely, Minn. He’s currently in rehearsals for the musical “Songs for a New World,” but this week he took time out to sing the praises of another event. “I love this time of year in Ely, Minnesota, because it’s when the Blueberry Art Festival happens, he said of the festival, which features more than 200 artists and crafters, 25 food vendors, a beer garden, and freshly baked blueberry...

Singer-songwriter Katy Vernon, who was born in London and now lives in White Bear Lake, Minn., recommends Theatre 55’s production of  “A Chorus Line – In Concert,” based on the 1975 musical about aspiring Broadway dancers. “Everything they do is geared towards performers 55 and up,” she says. “And as a performer myself, reaching that age in the next few years, I just really am encouraged and inspired by theater that shows none of us have an expiration date.” She adds: “‘A Chorus Line’ is...

Anastasia Hopkins Folpe of Rochester, Minn., first encountered the Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona several years ago. “I would describe it as a hidden gem,” Folpe said. “It's on the river in Winona, kind of behind the downtown. You have to hunt for it a little bit.”  She credited the museum’s director Scott Pollock for investing in spaces devoted to younger visitors.   “It's just a very welcoming and mellow place. I just like to go there and hang out. I think people just don't know...

Kyle Bernier is a Minneapolis-based art therapist and author of “Lazy Creativity: The Art of Owning Your Creativity.” He wanted to introduce Art Hounds audiences to the work of Susanna Gaunt, whose work can be seen through Sept. 5 at the Merrill Lynch Fine Arts Gallery of the Great Lakes Aquarium in Duluth. “Susanna is a Duluth-based artist who's been working at the GLA for a year now on the Great Lakes Almanac,” Bernier said. “Susanna has been gathering stories from the community about...

Noah Hynick of Minneapolis works at an escape room. He recommends a new play at Bryant Lake Bowl titled “The Assassination of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary Franz Ferdinand.” The play was written by Minnesota stand-up comic Joey Hamburger and is produced by Jackdonkey Productions. “It's all about the events leading up to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand,” Hynick explains. “It's sort of a tragic comedy and follows some real things that happen as well as some not quite true...

Ellen Mueller is an artist based in Minneapolis. She recommends “Im/perfect Slumbers,” on view in the window galleries and skyway entrance of the Minnesota Museum of American Art through August 20. “You can be walking down the street, and you will get the privilege of passing by several very cool artworks,” Mueller says. She especially likes the work of Peng Wu, “who has some really great vinyl installations.” Mueller also recommends Rachel Breen's recycled textiles and fiber creations and...

Kate Lawson, a former arts administrator and current arts enthusiast living in Minneapolis, is excited for Art-A-Whirl, the sprawling northeast Minneapolis open studio art tour that begins Friday.  In particular, she wants to point people to Hossle Woodworks. Founder Justin Hossle creates mid-century modern furniture and home decor. “The clean lines and natural finishes of his pieces really let the beauty of the woods stand out,” she said. “And it's a really fun experience to get to see how...

Sarah Schultz is a freelance curator and writer in Minneapolis. “I am really excited to see this body of work,” she says of the exhibition “Paysage Français: mémoire et fantasme” by Minneapolis artist Ilene Krug Mojsilov, which brings together decades of the artist’s work. Schultz explains the show title translated into English is “French landscape: memory and fantasy.” She says Mojsilov’s work is inspired by time the artist spent in France. “It's a rich assortment of work. It's both...

Patricia Anderson of Rochester is a choral director who teaches voice. She is excited about a forthcoming concert by Resounding Voices Chorus, “a wonderful organization that is part of a growing worldwide movement to improve the lives of people living with some sort of dementia and with their support partners through musical participation.” She explains that artistic director Suzy Johnson ”gets a wonderful mix of music … and then she arranges them so that they really fit very well with the...

South Minneapolis playwright and poet William Nour recommends “Returning to Haifa” by Pangea World Theater. This is a U.S. premiere of a play based on a novella by Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani. The play tells of a Palestinian couple who return to Haifa after the 1967 war to find the baby they left behind in 1948. They find a Jewish family of Holocaust survivors living in their old home. “It's my reality,” Nour says. “I came here when I was 16. Basically, because there were no...

Updated: 9:35 a.m. Daniel Doktori and his wife moved to Minneapolis and found painter Evan Abrahamson's work at local art fairs.  “We kept running into Evan and his booth and his work. And we really fell in love with it,” Doktori says. “His work is oil on canvas. And it combines this kind of really impressive skill in terms of rendering lifelike images of both landscapes and people with this kind of blurring technique that results in a kind of a haunting or like a dream-like type image and...

Nancy Crocker of Minneapolis recommends the musical “How to Avoid Burnout in 73 Minutes: A Minimally Invasive Musical Procedure.”  “I saw this show in its initial run. This is a wonderful, life-affirming show,” Crocker said. The show was created by Dr. Stuart Bloom, who also performs. It depicts his journey from a comedian in New York to an oncologist in Minnesota. The show is built around a simple premise: Bloom reads from a questionnaire designed to determine if someone is experiencing...

Pamela Lundstrum is a member of the Cultural Centre of Bird Island, which brings fine art to central Minnesota, south of Willmar. The center is offering an exhibit by wildlife painter Bradley Donner called “Wild Art,” which continues through the end of the month. Donner explains on his website that he enjoys going to the “wilds of northern Minnesota, Canada and the Driftless trout streams of southeast Minnesota and Wisconsin” to research art. “I am so excited about the newest exhibit,”...

Catherine Glynn is artistic director of Audacious Raw Theater in Lanesboro. She was able to see a preview of the play that opens Commonweal Theatre’s 35th season: “Bernhardt/Hamlet” by Theresa Rebeck. Glynn calls the play “a love letter to the theater and the art of collaboration.” The play is a work of historical fiction about actress Sarah Bernhardt, who was wildly celebrated in her time. Set in Paris in 1899, when Bernhardt’s theater has become riddled by debt. In order to save it, she...

Minneapolis actor Nissa Nordland was drawn to the play “Wish You Were Here” because of the premise: It’s a one-act improvised comedy about grief. A group shares memories about a friend who has died some time before. The show, which tends to vary each night, considers how their relationships have changed since the loss. “I love that it's the idea of bringing joy to a situation that we often are looking at with a sad lens,” said Nordland. “We are celebrating the person… and finding the joy in...