Evolving Connections | frugal fun for progressives age 50+

FilmNorth’s Stories 55 program again is offering filmmaking courses for older adults. There are still a few seats available in the Intro to the Short-Form Narrative class. It is designed for students with no prior film-making experience. Cost is only $25 because of generous grant support. Go to the Film North website to apply. Apply now if you're interested. Only a few seats remain. Check the details below for times and start dates. Participants have the opportunity to create short films of storytelling/narrative, with a public screening event following the end of class at FilmNorth’s state-of-the-art media arts center in the Creative Enterprise Zone in St Paul. This fall class begins September 4, 2019 so there's no time to waste! FilmNorth provides filmmaking equipment, sound equipment, classrooms, editing software, and high quality projection and sound – in a warmly visual and creative setting. FilmNorth is fully accessible with ample parking and is conveniently located off of I-94 between Saint Paul and Minneapolis with public transportation available nearby. This program is made possible through generous funding from Aroha Philanthropies as part of the Seeding Vitality Arts MN program. ABOUT THE PROGRAM Older adults have a lifetime of stories to share and insights into the world from lived experience. Their perspectives are important to share, and film is a particularly accessible way in which to do that – especially with new technology that makes filmmaking easier and more affordable than ever before. While most adults have a smartphone that can record video, creating quality films requires an understanding of writing, light, sound, framing, scoring, and editing. FilmNorth can provide that training in a sequential skill-building series that includes a social component to encourage relationship-building among the participants. This structured (and casual) learning environment does not serve as art therapy, but rather as a true arts learning experience where students are challenged to put a critical eye to their work, as well as to the work of their classmates. They emerge from the program with a high-quality film that they can share with friends and family, post on a personal website, and enjoy themselves. On the FilmNorth page about these classes, find links to STORIES 55 student films on the FilmNorth Vimeo channel. 2019 FALL COURSE SCHEDULE INTRODUCTION TO SHORT-FORM NARRATIVE FILMMAKING (FALL SESSION) Instructor: Barbara Wiener 9 sessions: Wednesdays September 4-November 6 (no class October 9), 9am-12pm Culminating Screening Event: Wednesday, November 20, 7-10pm (Search for FilmNorth Stories 55, and the page should come right up!) Also on that page, follow the link and take a look at the films some students from last year made, either by themselves or in collaboration with others in their classes.

Among the small theater companies here, Frank Theatre is one of the best and most longstanding. They're presenting two shorter plays in one evening-- "Escaped Alone" and "Here We Go"--to deliver an evening of theatre by perhaps the greatest living playwright, Caryl Churchill, whose work Frank has presented many times in the company’s 30-year history. Churchill’s sizzling work "Escaped Alone" is a 55-minute elliptical view of the apocalypse, a fantasy intricately wired with politics. Four women in their 70s gather for tea in an English garden, combining small talk and the horrors of modern life. Their gossipy everyday conversations lay bare their psychological troubles — from depression to fear of cats, from an “accidentally” dead husband to agoraphobia — punctuated starkly with surreal apocalyptic monologues. Which world is real? How are they connected? “Line by line it’s hard to imagine you’ll come across a more brilliant play this year . . . and what makes Escaped Alone a great play is that it is strangely euphoric: spiked with terrible, apocalyptic foreboding, yes, but Churchill’s funniest since Serious Money, and with an incredible gift for spinning light out of the dark.”—Time Out London “It’s worth noting that simply writing a play featuring four women in their seventies without making it about their age is a reasonably subversive political act.” — The Atlantic In the second piece, Churchill peers into the void with "Here We Go," a poetic triptych of mortality. In the first scene, a group has gathered at a party after a funeral, remembering the man who has passed. In the second scene, a man observes the afterlife—Valhalla, Charon, and other mythical representations appear to him. But has he died? In the third wordless section, we see the intimate relationship between a frail man winding down his life with a caregiver. “What Churchill has written is a striking memento mori for an age without faith; and although her play is brief, that in itself evokes the idea that we are here for a short time and then are suddenly gone.” — The Guardian on Here We Go Caryl Churchill has written for the stage, television, and radio. A renowned and prolific playwright, her plays include Cloud Nine, Top Girls, Far Away, Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?, Bliss, Love and Information, Mad Forest, and A Number. In 2002, she received the Obie Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2010, she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. Ticket cost: 30 ($25 for students and seniors) Directed by Wendy Knox Costume design by Kathy Kohl Set by Joe Stanley Lights by Mike Wangen Sound by Dan Dukich CAST OF EACH PLAY: ESCAPED ALONE Katherine Ferrand Barbra Berlovitz Maria Asp Janis Hardy HERE WE GO Maria Asp Charla Marie Bailey Patrick Bailey Barbra Berlovitz Katherine Ferrand Janis Hardy Performances run Sept 6 - 29, 2019, Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 pm, Sundays at 2 pm. http://franktheatre.org/events/escaped-alone-here-we-go/