Patrick Scully as Walt Whitman.
The Guthrie Theater will present the works of four Twin Cities companies in its Dowling Studio next season, including companies such as Interact and Full Circle Theater, the Guthrie has announced.
All are part of the Level Nine initiative, which provides provocative, high quality theater and community engagement work for the affordable price of $9.
Things kick off with a show by Prime Productions, the Twin Cities company founded in 2015 to give theatrical voice to women over 50. Tira Palmquist's "Two Degrees" is about a climate scientist's work in the hostile environment of the nation's capital. Shelli Place, who co-founded Prime with Alison Edwards and Elena Giannetti, directs. (Oct. 5-21)
Next up is "Hot Funky Butt Jazz!" from Interact, the 22-year-old company that offers theatrical opportunities to performers of all abilities. A musical about the birth of jazz in turn-of-the-century New Orleans, the show was co-created by Interact founder Jeanne Calvit and has original tunes by the company's resident composer Aaron Gabriel, performed by New Orleans-bred musicians. (Nov. 2-18)
Full Circle Theater, founded in 2015 by a diverse company of mature artists, will stage "Caught," an Obie Award-winning play by Christopher Chen. The San Francisco writer was inspired by the backlash over a partly fabricated story by Mike Daisey (a recent Dowling Studio performer himself) about the working conditions in Chinese factories that make Apple iPhones. Rick Shiomi, who led Theater Mu for a quarter century, directs. (May 17-June 2, 2019)
The Guthrie's final presentation is "Leaves of Grass – Illuminated," writer and performer Patrick Scully's take on the poetry of Walt Whitman. Scully founded the now-defunct Patrick's Cabaret, a longtime haven for cutting-edge performance artists. (July 12-14, 2019)
"This is huge for me," Scully said by email. "I first went to the Guthrie in 1968 to see 'The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui' with my high school German class. Since that visit, the Guthrie has represented for me the zenith of theater in Minnesota. So high up there, that it never occurred to me that I might one day climb on stage there."
