40 Years of Theater

This brief history is my way of saying thank you to all the artists and audiences that have supported my forty years of creating theater in the region.

In the summer of 2007, as a part of a theater festival put together by long time theater friend, Dean Seal, I told stories about living in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Another old friend, Barry Casselman, came to see one of the shows. Barry used to write and publish a newspaper (Many Corners) located on the west bank of the University of Minnesota. In the article he wrote this fall for Minnesota Observer Quarterly he mentioned a play I wrote and directed (Sailor George) in 1972. 

Upon reading this I did some math and came to conclusion that I have been working in professional theater in the Twin Cities for 40 years. I admit I was kind of surprised and a little shocked because that seems like a long time! But I’m still in there pitching. This fall I acted in a play at Bedlam Theater where I danced with a guy while I was wearing boxer shorts, long black socks, a red beret, and sun glasses.
 

 Sailor George was the second play I wrote and directed and when I saw the year I started thinking  back…I arrived in the Twin Cities as a young man in my 20’s. I had acted in a few plays while in the Air Force at the local college-College of Great Falls, Montana. I knew no one in the theater here and by any standard I was not a very good actor, but I loved it.

I was acting at The Eastside Theater (alas, no longer with us.) in Saint Paul where I met John Jenkins and Joe Walsh. John and Linda Jenkins brought me to the Children’s Theater. I acted there for four seasons. At first I was in the group scenes with occasionally a small speaking part. Eventually I moved up to playing most of the villains. During the day time I studied ballet, modern, and jazz dancing. I was never good at any of these but I worked hard.

The four years at The CTC transformed me and set the course for the rest of my life. Working with Bain Boehlke, Wendy Lehr, and John Donahue (among others there) taught me what it meant to truly work in the theater. Up to that time I thought I knew what I was doing but I didn’t. I came out of those four years a very well schooled and expertly trained professional.

Around 1970 Joe Walsh and I co-found the Minnesota Ensemble Theater. The MET moved into the Walker Church on 16^th and 31st Street. In the same building was an office to help you avoid of the draft (for the Viet Nam War), an office to help you if you were on the run from the military, and a Methodist Church in the basement. One day several puppeteers gathered the basement blooming into The Powderhorn Puppets who became The Heart of the Beast Mask and Puppet Theater.

At the MET I wrote and directed my first play in 1971, Fresh Meat. I played the lead in Macbeth. I’m pretty sure (it’s been awhile) this may have been first play Bain Boehlke directed outside of The CTC. I was around 28 years old. The MET imploded when Joe Walsh was arrested for assault. He took what little money the theater had and fled to New York City. He came back several months later and was put on probation. A group of us revolted and split off from The MET and formed The Palace Theater.

So, The Palace Theater had a volcanic beginning and some people say it never stopped. The Palace blazed a theatrical trail for ten years and if you were ever at one of our company meetings that would amaze you. For the first couple of years we had no home and bounced around. We rehearsed in a couple of storefronts and even in my car. One day we moved into the old Firehouse bookstore, the building where Mixed Blood Theater is now. The city owned the building, I think, but no one was running it and it was empty. So we just moved in. After we had been there a few months another group of theater people moved into one of the empty offices upstairs. They called themselves The Playwrights…something. I honestly can’t remember, but it was the folks who started the Playwrights Center.

The Guthrie opened the Guthrie-2 in what is now The Southern Theater. I remember The Guthrie-2 hung on for a couple of years. The Guthrie-2/The Southern building was just a tiny part of a very complicated deal involving many moving parts, including the Metrodome Hotel, The Peoples Center, affordable housing, politicians, developers, grass roots organizers, and a sizable amount of money. Originally The Guthrie-2/The Southern was designed to be torn down and an access/delivery road to the back of the hotel would go there. This is another story that I will write someday. I am very proud of playing a key role in saving the building that is now The Southern. The upshot of a great deal of political maneuvering was that The Palace Theater ended up in the building as caretakers. The building was officially put into the hands of The Minneapolis Arts Commission (Alas, no longer with us) but if you wanted to use the building you called The Palace. There we had our office as well as rehearsing and performing from around 1975 to 1985.

During this decade of extraordinary theater The Palace created a unique theatrical language. Certainly there was nothing here like it before and there has been nothing like it since. “The Palace Theater is the theater that draws the most praise from other members of the theatrical community…the theaters leader is playwright, actor and director Jim Stowell, whose energy and dedication keep the Palace together…” (Star/Trib, 11/4/83)

At the Minnesota Ensemble Theater and the Palace Theater I was a producer or writer/director or actor in around thirty-five plays. In the last forty years I worked in over sixty new plays that were all professionally produced.

The first live performance in KTCA’s new studio was a performance of my one-man show, Talking Pictures. I have toured the five state areas twice with the CTC and with two of my one-man shows, Traveling Light and Easy Eddie.

 I wrote and directed the first show performed at The Southern Theater. (The Desperados) When I helped found the Minneapolis Ensemble Theatre (1970-1974) there were about five theaters in the Twin Cities, total. When I helped found The Palace Theater there still were no other “experimental” theater in the cities. The theater scene in the Twin Cities looked completely different than it does now. For example, among others, The Illusion, Mixed Blood, The Penumbra, The History Theater and Theater de la June Lund did not exist. So, everything we did was groundbreaking. I did the first full length one-man play in the Twin Cities. And putting it together was a wild adventure for Patty Lynch and me. Every rehearsal was breaking trail.

 Of course, there have been some seriously difficult times. For example, I am well known to be terrible at raising money so it has been forty years of hard scramble for money to do my projects. Heaven knows I have received some very bad reviews. But the people in the audience and courageous local artist were always there helping me.

 Well, to paraphrase Bud Grant, “You can’t be considered a great player without longevity.” I started when I was around twenty-five years old and I turned sixty-five in January of 2008. Forty years. That is a lot of performances, a lot of theater artists, a lot of audiences, a lot of people watching and listening. My work has always been visible for people to critique, to like it or not. And I did it here. I have seen a lot of people come and go. At times I have wondered if staying here was smart, if it was good for my career. I don’t know but I don’t regret it. I am glad I stayed here-home. I am not sure I could have made it through some of the bad times and I know I would never have grown as an artist as much as I have without the audiences and the feedback they have given me over the years.