A day for the books

Rain Taxi editor Eric Lorberer was so thrilled to introduce writer Joy Williams at the Twin Cities Book Festival on Saturday that he could hardly believe it was true. "Somebody tweet it so I'll believe it," he said, a joke, of course, since Lorberer is not on social media — not on Twitter, not on Facebook, only occasionally on e-mail. Saturday's Rain Taxi-sponsored festival had much going on — readings, a book fair, signings (long lines, two writers at a time, all day), and panel discussions. Sen. Amy Klobuchar gave a warm, funny talk to a spillover crowd. While fundraising, the senator said, she once "raised $17,000 from ex-boyfriends. As my husband points out, that's not an expanding base." There was so much going on that you could be sitting in one presentation, riveted, and then hear laughter or applause from the presentation over yonder and wish for a moment that you had chosen differently. But truly, with the Twin Cities Book Festival, it was impossible to go wrong.

LAURIE HERTZEL

Little Man's big day

It's hard to know what's more impressive about the day Chris Perricelli had last Saturday: The fact that he pulled off three gigs plus a sound-engineering job in one day, performed to audience members ages 2 to probably 82, or just the usual way the St. Paul rocker known as Little Man usually impresses a crowd with his flamboyant, fiery performances. He fired off a new train song and read a "Curious George" book at Choo-Choo Bob's store at 10 a.m., then moved over to sound-man duties at Mixed Blood Theatre in the afternoon, got to the Dakota Jazz Club in time to open for Edgar Winter with a solo electric set, then finished off the Flamin' Oh's release party at Lee's Liquor Lounge. The children's gig, ironically, may have been the hardest one: "I'd never read a story to any kid before, much less 25," he told I.W. The solo Dakota set might have been the best. "Everyone was really engaged," he bragged. He was happy to have his band with him at Lee's: "They pulled me through," he said. "Then I was whipped."

Chris Riemenschneider

Judging zombies

Before he sang a note at the State Theatre on Saturday, singer-songwriter John Hiatt talked about all the zombies he'd encountered on the streets of downtown Minneapolis participating in the annual Zombie Pub Crawl. He said he'd seen zombies in other cities but nothing like Twin Cities zombies. Lyle Lovett, Hiatt's stage partner, piped in: "Drunken Scandinavian zombies are the worst."

Jon Bream

Chris Perricelli

Stage actors go online

Congrats, "Theater People." What started as a homegrown homage to that wacky unpredictable existence known as the Acting Life has become an award-winning Web series drawing attention on the festival circuit. It's also about to wrap its third season, which will premiere online Oct. 30. Recently named best Web series out of thousands of entries at the Open World Toronto Film Festival, the Kickstarter-funded series will present the first episode of Season 3 this weekend (12:15 p.m. Sat.) as part of the Twin Cities Film Festival. Taped at several familiar locations including the Guthrie, Chanhassen and Old Log theaters and featuring an all-local cast of 20 plus extras, the story follows a newbie director played by well-known local stage actor Stacia Rice as she wrangles her first big gig at the prestigious Shepherd Theater — a very, very Guthrie-like institution. "It's great to see people in far-flung places all over the world, from Orlando to Rome to Toronto, connect with these characters," said the show's creator/main writer/director, Matt Anderson. "It speaks volumes about the talent we have here."

KRISTIN TILLOTSON

Trading places

When poet Joyce Sutphen inquired about the time limit for her reading — was it seven minutes, or eight? — guest emcee Danny Klecko said, "You're [Minnesota] poet laureate — we'll give you nine." This month's Readings by Writers at the University Club in St. Paul had an autumnal tone. Mark Berriman, poet and publisher of the Stillwater Gazette, followed Sutphen, drawing gasps from an audience possibly unprepared for his funny but off-color poems about St. Paul. Before he began, he looked at Sutphen and said, "I told you [at the Twin Cities Book Festival] that I didn't want to follow you." He decided to look on the bright side. In the past few weeks, he said, he's opened for Venus de Mars and other local celebrities. "Now I can say that Joyce Sutphen has opened for me."

LAURIE HERTZEL

Damn Yankees

David Stewart had an offer he couldn't refuse. He's the new production director at the Guthrie Theater, replacing Frank Butler on Nov. 2. Stewart had been teaching at the University of Texas at Austin for three years, a post he thought of as his dream job. "The Guthrie is like the Yankees of theater, and when the Yankees call, you gotta go," he told I.W. However, he added that he's not a Yankee fan.

Rohan Preston