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Uptown’s HUGE Improv Theater closing in October
The board said performances and classes will cease with the theater’s closure at the end of October.
MINNEAPOLIS — The Minneapolis theater community was dealt a huge blow Friday after it was announced a popular improv performance space will close next month.
Managing director of Uptown’s HUGE Improv Theater, Sean Dillon, confirmed the news to KARE 11 Friday afternoon. Dillon said performances and classes will cease with the theater’s closure at the end of October. A Facebook post published by the theater chalked up the reasons for the decision as “complex, but they ultimately boil down to money.”
“The Board has concluded that, after a series of expected and unexpected challenges, cash flow just cannot sustain the work HUGE was set out to accomplish,” the post reads.
But while the theater maintains the closure comes amid financial troubles, some members of the community believe the closure is related to the resignation of the theater’s co-founder Butch Roy and artistic director Becky Hauser last month. The resignations came after it was alleged the theater whitewashed casting for an upcoming show. The theater’s co-executive and inclusion director, John Gebretatose, went on to write an open letter, questioning the theater’s commitment to diversity among its performers.
Following the resignations, the board released a statement on its website, saying it was “in the process of developing a plan to ensure we reflect our ideal that improv is for everyone.”
The HUGE Improv Theater Board also denied the rumors in its social media post Friday.
“We want to be emphatically clear: the open letter raising concerns about diversity on HUGE’s stage is not the reason for this closure,” the post said. “HUGE was already in a precarious financial situation, and there simply isn’t a viable way forward.
“Our struggle to find sufficient stable funding in no way diminishes the amazing work that HUGE has produced and supported over the years, and more importantly the diverse and enthusiastic community it has fostered.
“We know work still lies ahead to ensure that improv in the Twin Cities is truly a space for everyone, and we look to our community to continue these vital and challenging conversations.”
Co-founder Jill Bernard, who began improv in 1993, is grateful to have helped take the Minneapolis improv scene to new heights.
“When I started improv in 1993, there were very few women, there were very BIPOC performers, and we’ve sort of changed everything that’s possible for people to really hear and use their own voices on stage,” Bernard said. “And I feel like HUGE was a big part of that.”
The theater said it plans to run its shows through October as planned, as well as its fall term classes. The board encouraged the community to support performers and “participate in the life of the theater to the fullest extent you can.”
“There will be more to share as we move forward, but for now: thank you all for everything you have given to this place, and for always being the beating heart of what makes HUGE HUGE.”
The crash happened when a Suburban pulling a trailer failed to stop at a stop sign, Minnesota State Patrol said.
WAUKENABO, Minn. — Two people from Minnetonka died in a crash Friday in Aitkin County while others, including children, were hurt.
According to Minnesota State Patrol, it happened at the intersection of Highway 169 and Grove Street/County Road 3 in Waukenabo Township at approximately 5:15 p.m.
A Suburban pulling a trailer was driving east on County Road 3 but did not stop at the stop sign at Highway 169, authorities said. The vehicle was struck by a northbound GMC Yukon. Two other vehicles were struck in the crash, but the people in those two cars were not injured.
In the Suburban, the driver sustained life-threatening injuries, according to State Patrol. Elizabeth Jane Baldwin, 61, of Minnetonka, and Marlo Dean Baldwin, 92, of Minnetonka, both died. Officials said the driver of the vehicle, a 61-year-old from Minnetonka, has life-threatening injuries.
There were six people in the Yukon when the crash occurred. The 44-year-old driver, as well as passengers ages 18, 14, and 11, sustained what officials described as life-threatening injuries. The other two passengers have non-life-threatening injuries.
Alcohol is not believed to be a factor in the crash, but officials said Elizabeth Jane Baldwin had not been wearing a seatbelt.
Among those at the start line this year will be Alex Vigil.
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Pixar’s second installment of the movie features characters we’ve already met — Joy, Sadness and Anger — and gives them a new roommate named Anxiety.
MINNEAPOLIS — Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” universe plays out inside the mind of the movie’s adolescent protagonist, Riley.
She plays a kid from Minnesota whose family uproots her life by moving to San Francisco. But did you know that what plays out in Riley’s mind actually comes from the mind of a real-life Minnesotan?
“You are one of us!” said Breaking the News anchor Jana Shortal.
“Yes, I am!” said Burnsville native and the movie’s creator and director, Kelsey Mann.
Mann was chosen for the role by ANOTHER Minnesotan — Pete Docter, the man behind the original movie, “Inside Out.”
“I don’t know if Pete asked me to do this movie because I was from Minnesota and he was from Minnesota … I just think it worked out that way,” Mann said.
How two guys from the south metro made a pair of Pixar movies that would change the game is a hell of a story that began with Docter in 2015.
“He [Docter] was just trying to tell a fun story — an emotional, fun story — and didn’t realize how much it would help give kids a vocabulary to talk about things they were feeling because they are feeling those emotions, but they’re really hard to talk about,” Mann said.
Some parents, counselors and teachers might even tell you it did more good for kids than just entertain them. It unlocked their emotions and begged for what Mann set out to create at the beginning of 2020.
“That part was fun, particularly fun,” he said. “I think the daunting part was following up a film that everyone really loved.”
But Mann knew what he wanted to do with the movie’s follow-up, “Inside Out 2.”
“Diving into Riley’s adolescence … that was just fun,” he said.
This time around, Riley is 13, hitting puberty and facing all of what, and who, comes with it. The franchise’s second installment features characters we’ve already met — Joy, Sadness and Anger — and gives them a new roommate named Anxiety.
“I think that’s what’s fun about the ‘Inside Out’ world: You can take something we all know and give it a face,” Mann said. “We can give anxiety a name and a face.”
The film follows Riley’s emotions fighting it out for control of her life. Joy wants Riley to stay young and hold on only to joy, while anxiety is hell-bent on taking over Riley over at the age of 13 because as a lot of us know, that’s when anxiety often moves in.
“I always pitched it as a takeover movie, like an emotional takeover,” Mann said. “Anxiety can kind of feel like that; it can take over and kind of shove your other emotions to the side and repress them.”
For a kids’ movie, it’s hard to watch this animation play out, even when an adult has the keys to decide.
“I’m making a movie about anxiety and I still have to remind myself to have my anxiety take a seat,” Mann said.
All of our individual anxieties have a place in this world.
“The whole movie honestly is about acceptance. Both acceptance of anxiety being there and also of your own flaws,” said Mann.
Even for our kids, we have to remember that this is life.
Anxiety will come for them; it does for us all.
The “Inside Out” world just shows them it’s so.
