Music: Ruby's returns

With her two sons out of the house, Minneapolis entertainment impresario Mary Kelley Leer can return her attention to her beloved "daughter" Ruby.

From 1985 to '92, Ruby's Cabaret, a hard-to-define but always intriguing live venue, spawned Moore by Four, Ballet of the Dolls and many other key players in the Twin Cities performing arts world.

Now, after a 16-year absence, Leer is reviving Ruby's at the Lab in Minneapolis' Warehouse District with -- who else? -- pianist/arranger Sanford Moore and Jevetta and Jearlyn Steele in a show called "Sisters."

"I knew I wanted to open with something that was a throwback to what Ruby's was all about, which meant something not strictly Caucasian," Leer said. "Jearlyn said she and Jevetta had sort of been keeping notes over the years about being sisters."

Leer urged them to develop it into a show, bringing in Guthrie veteran Isabell Monk O'Connor to add a more theatrical element to complement the music. Then they enlisted Moore, who "literally goes back to day one of Ruby's."

Leer is reviving Ruby's in a space she has long coveted. In fact, her husband, developer Chuck Leer, is part-owner of the site.

"I can't believe I'm doing this again," she said over lunch after a morning of painting the new 350-seat, 6,000-square-foot venue. "I love this space. In fact, Chuck and I looked at that space when it was literally a hole in the ground and I was doing the first Ruby's. But we knew it would be too costly."

So she told the Guthrie Theater about it, and her husband ended up developing it for the Guthrie Lab in 1987. That playhouse closed in 2006 as the Guthrie prepared to expand into its new three-stage complex on the Mississippi River.

Jill of all trades

As was the case in two earlier Ruby's locations (first in northeast Minneapolis, then where the Twins stadium is being built), Leer, 58, is the producer, carpenter, painter and main employee.

"Sanford [Moore] was making fun of me the other day because I arrived with my box of tools, carrying music stands, cans of paint and a couple of prop pieces for the stage. He said: 'Do they have you doing all of this?' I said, 'Who's the 'they'? I still only see one person here.'"

Since closing Ruby's in 1992, Leer has worked as an arts consultant, ad salesperson and financial manager for a loft project.

Her philosophy with the new Ruby's is the same as before: "To give local artists a chance to do something they couldn't do somewhere else." Or more specifically: "We're more theater than cabaret and more cabaret than most theaters. And everything is an hour and a half or less without intermission."

The old Ruby's was a training ground for such future Twin Cities gems as Moore by Four, Zeitgeist, Ballet of the Dolls, Ruth MacKenzie, Dennis Spears, James Williams, Cynthia Johnson, several Chanhassen Dinner Theater performers, sound engineers at the Guthrie and the lighting designer of Holidazzle and Glamorama.

Leer already has booked some new and old names, including "The Cooking Show" with Robert Karimi, Renee Foss' Fringe Festival favorite "Around the World in a Bad Mood" and the Minnesota Dance Theatre's "Extreme."

Leer also hopes to do a Latino film festival and other projects with Melissa Rivera, 34, who has a Ph.D. in hip-hop and teaches at the University of Minnesota and Hamline University Law School. She used to baby-sit Leer's sons.

Said Leer: "One of the things I've always prided myself on at Ruby's is mix-it-up stuff -- to try to appeal to an audience that is as diverse as this city could bring us."

Jon Bream • 612-673-1719