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[MUSIC PLAYING] It's Word of Mouth, your Minnesota Public Radio guide to the arts. Chris Roberts here serving as your host.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Any kind of comedy depends pretty heavily on politics for material. In rare instances, politicians, politics and presidents can become untouchable. The events of September 11 serve as a prime example. But while people inside the Beltway remain hesitant to debate the Bush administration's response to terrorism, there appears to be a change of attitude outside Washington. In Minneapolis, the Brave New Workshop Comedy Theater's latest production is a case in point.

SPEAKER 1: Who could possibly lead us through this dark and confusing time? Who will comfort us in this our most devastating hour? Why I can answer that with just one letter.

[CHEERFUL MUSIC] He's Dubya, George Dubya

He'll help US counter this insurrection cause his brother fixed the election Dubya, George Dubya Good evening, America

CHRIS ROBERTS: The show is called Bushwhacked 2, One Nation Under Stress. It's a sequel to a show the Brave New Workshop did during the first Bush administration. In Bushwhacked 2 purports to examine what the company refers to as the new Americana in the wake of September 11. Director Caleb MacEwen says it's not about September 11, but America's response.

CALEB MACEWEN: We've wanted to do a show about America's reaction to the events of September 11 and all the hoopla surrounding that ever since it happened. The way it timed out when it occurred, we basically had our next two shows already done.

And we didn't have a chance to address it. It worked out in a fortuitous manner for us. Because right when we're coming around to the point when we could do something about it is also a time when public opinion has softened enough too that people are willing to even listen to it.

SPEAKER 2: Daddy, why are we fighting a war in "Maf-ghanistan?" Does we hate the "Maf-ghanistan-ians?"

SPEAKER 3: No, we don't hate them. We're fighting a war because-- well, it's kind of hard to explain. You see, America is like me, right? Sure. And Afghanistan is kind of like your momma.

SPEAKER 2: Momma's like "Maf-ghanistan?"

SPEAKER 3: She sure is. She's always saying stuff that I don't understand. And sometimes she'll randomly destroy objects that are very important to me.

CALEB MACEWEN: The motto that Dudley set up when he founded the theater in 1958, of course, was positive neutrality, promiscuous hostility. So we are not espousing necessarily a Democratic or Republican side of things. We question everything.

And in fact, if you watch the show, both sides of arguments on the political spectrum are taken apart, and analyzed and criticized. So we let people make up their own minds about that sort of thing. We don't espouse a particular set of political beliefs. But what we do want people to do is to question everything, and discuss everything and be aware of what is going on.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Bushwhacked 2, One Nation Under Stress is on stage at the Brave New Workshop Comedy Theater in Minneapolis through June 15. You should know the troop no longer performs in Calhoun Square. It's back in its old digs on Hennepin Avenue.

[COUNTRY MUSIC] It's hard to be an American where freedom is already won

Nobody hugs the superpower Instead, they scream and run It's hard to be the privileged, the best, the chosen few It's not our fault that we're Americans and God loves us more than you

CHRIS ROBERTS: OK, pop quiz time. Who is this man and who is he talking about?

MARK ADAMO: If you look at Jo closely, you'll realize that she is not so much a proto feminist heroine as a proto post-feminist heroine.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Perhaps you figured out that Jo is the Jo in Little Women. But the man, that's a little tougher. He's Mark Adamo, who has turned the Louisa May Alcott novel into an opera currently being performed by the Minnesota Opera.

[OPERA MUSIC] Things change for a babe at the breast

Your daughter by the fire You have all the love you think you could desire. Still--

CHRIS ROBERTS: Adamo says, there have been several attempts at putting Little Women on the opera stage, none of them terribly successful. When he was commissioned by the Washington DC based Summer Opera Theater Company to write the libretto, he struggled to find a theme to tie it all together. That's where the proto post-feminist heroine stuff comes in.

MARK ADAMO: What she has at the opening of the book is the balance of support and freedom, as well as a fulfilling career that most modern 21st century adults look for and maybe find in a marriage. But she has it with her siblings. And so her struggle in the book, which is there, although it is covered with accretion after accretion of irrelevant if charming event. But her struggle in the book is to try to maintain an emotional equilibrium. While she is smart enough to know that she is happy, she is not yet wise enough to know that that's going to change.

And so after my initial resistance to the book, thinking, my god, how am I going to unearth something that is not encrusted with Valentine, then I knew that this could sing. And the joke, of course, was that I brought it back to Washington and they said, but we were hoping for something much more episodic and disjunct. And though they didn't know this, like the other five versions for the opera stage, which had failed and now lay in nomine in the Library of Congress. So it was a long, circuitous path from then to Houston to here.

[OPERA MUSIC] Shall I go on?

Please One day in town riding past the window of our house he'd never seen He spied a maid reading How old was she? Just 19

It's about a woman who, at that unstable moment between childhood and adulthood, becomes briefly emotionally controlling of all the important people in her life because they are abandoning her for reasons she does not understand. And that seemed extremely resonant to me. Because I have a feeling if we took a poll in this very room of the number of times that the word controlling has either been wielded either by us or against us in relationships that are not going quite the way they're going, I think we'd have-- if we had collected a dime from everyone to whom that pertained, we'd have a pile of glittering coins in the middle of the studio. And so that's what seemed to me to make the piece contemporary because all of its other concerns have dated.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Mark Adamo's operatic adaptation of Little Women plays at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in Saint Paul through Sunday.

[OPERA MUSIC] Do you know that line?

ALICIA RENÉE: My name is Alicia Renée. You're listening to Word of Mouth, a radio guide to the arts on Minnesota Public Radio with somebody named Chris?

CHRIS ROBERTS: Yes, Chris Roberts. That's 18-year-old Alicia Renée She's an extraordinary singer for her age. We'll be hearing from her in just a few moments on with Word of Mouth.

SPEAKER 4: You're going to take a nap too?

SPEAKER 5: These political elections are getting dirtier every day.

SPEAKER 4: What do you mean?

SPEAKER 5: I barely got through three note cards and he didn't have to use that information about my dreams. That was a low blow, even by his standards.

SPEAKER 4: Oh, you mean about the squirrel dreams?

SPEAKER 5: Yes, of course, that's what I mean.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Imagine living in an oatmeal can. Now, imagine living in that oatmeal can with two other people. Now, imagine electing a leader of the oatmeal can every day. Welcome to Among the Oats.

SPEAKER 5: The squirrels stand for everything I should be working to avoid in my life. I need clearer focus.

SPEAKER 4: They're just squirrels. I don't think they really stand for anything.

SPEAKER 5: The squirrel dream didn't make you vote for Bruce.

SPEAKER 4: No.

SPEAKER 5: Then why did you vote for him?

SPEAKER 4: Well, you kept going on and on about change and everything.

SPEAKER 5: Yeah.

SPEAKER 4: I don't know. I guess I kind of like things the way they are.

CHRIS ROBERTS: The Minneapolis-based Center for the Performing Arts presents Jason Hall's absurdist comedy Among the Oats, consisting of three 20-minute episodes-- Dream, Money and Sex. The three actors share a very small stage with 350 pounds of real oats. Director [? Jared ?] [? Reese ?] says the play was originally written as a six-part sitcom. The idea was to put three people in a very tight space to see what happens. But [? Reese ?] says there is a serious undertone.

[? JARED REESE: ?] It seems like it's the end of the world. There's no way out. It's a trap.

It's a maze that these guys can't escape from. But then towards the end, it gets a little more extensialistic. Cal, [? David ?] [? Sloshe's ?] character, just assures everybody that my beliefs and my dreams are going to get me home.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Among the Oats runs through Sunday at the Center for the Performing Arts in Minneapolis. The fourth Annual American Pottery Festival gets underway this weekend at the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis. Through a process commonly referred to as--

[CLEARS THROAT]

--word of mouth, the center finds and invites some of the best potters in the country to Minneapolis to do a little show and tell. Festival organizer [? Kate ?] [? Baumann ?] says two techniques are all the rage this year, wood firing and soda firing.

[? KATE BAUMANN: ?] Soda firing is actually when you have a gas-fired kiln and you introduce soda into the atmosphere, baking soda. And it gives the pots a nice, warm, soft glow, a glazed look that just comes from the soda, not from an actual glaze that you put on the pot. And wood firing is actually using wood as a fuel to fire the kiln. And the wood ash actually goes into the firing chamber and deposits on the pots and peppers them and glazes them as well.

CHRIS ROBERTS: The American Pottery Festival runs through Sunday at the Northern Clay Center and features several stoneware, porcelain and earthenware demonstration workshops.

[KLEZMER MUSIC]

James Sewell says when you hear klezmer music, you can't help but want to move. However, klezmer is much more than that, as he discovered when he researched the music and how it was used at Jewish weddings where everyone was required to dance. The James Sewell Company will present the premiere of his new piece, Klezmer Dances, this weekend at O'Shaughnessy Auditorium in Saint Paul.

JAMES SEWELL: And so it's a ballet that's about community. It's about support and sacrifice. And it's inspired by age-old themes that I think the history of the music touches on.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Sewell says he originally intended to use a range of music in the piece. Then he heard the playing of clarinetist Giora Feidman and decided to use his music exclusively. The Sewell program will also include three other recent balletic pieces by company members.

Like many of his other works, Edward Albee's latest play, The Play About the Baby, is a tale of lost innocence. It features a very young Adam and Eve-like couple and their baby cavorting around in paradise totally naive to the ways of the world.

SPEAKER 6: Maybe we better go back, get some more answers, take the baby with us.

SPEAKER 7: No! Gypsies steal babies.

SPEAKER 6: They don't.

SPEAKER 7: It's famous. It's like the money scam.

SPEAKER 6: What is that?

SPEAKER 7: The Gypsy promises to double your money for you. So you bring it to her or him to be blessed so it'll double or whatever. You bring it in $10 bills or something in a big paper bag.

SPEAKER 6: Why do you do that?

SPEAKER 7: What?

SPEAKER 6: Bring it to the Gypsy in a big paper bag.

SPEAKER 7: To be blessed.

SPEAKER 6: No, why in a big paper bag?

SPEAKER 7: Because that's the way the Gypsy asks for it.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Enter an older couple, two vaudevillian performers who soft shoe their way into the young couple's lives and steal their baby. Eye of the Storm Theater is staging the play about the baby at the theater garage in Minneapolis through May 19. Artistic director [? Casey ?] [? Stengel ?] says the play contains Albee's trademark quirky humor and use of language, but is more open ended in terms of interpretation.

[? CASEY STENGEL: ?] There really isn't any such thing as an absolute truth. I think that Albee believes that. And that's great on the one hand, but it requires a certain amount of responsibility, and forethought and determination in your life to live in that way. So it's been interesting that putting the play together, we've viscerally experienced what the play is trying to say.

[NON-ENGLISH SINGING]

CHRIS ROBERTS: The Rose Ensemble is inviting you to join them on the Road to Compostela. For centuries, the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela in Spain has been a pilgrimage destination, mainly because it's believed to be the resting place of Saint James the Apostle. In addition to bones and relics, there's also a 12th century manuscript containing a collection of what Rose Ensemble artistic director Jordan Sramek describes as folk hymns, which have been sung for hundreds of years. Sramek says the hymns require virtuosic singing ability because while based on Gregorian chants, they have no meter.

JORDAN SRAMEK: The composer didn't say, this particular song has four beats to a measure and there really are no bar lines. So we rely upon the text in order to decipher how to sing the music. And the result can be extremely fast and extremely psychedelic, or it can be extremely slow and melodic.

[NON-ENGLISH SINGING]

CHRIS ROBERTS: The Rose Ensemble will perform this music tonight at the Sacred Heart Music Center in Duluth and tomorrow night at the Basilica of Saint Mary in Minneapolis. The music has been set to dance by Minneapolis choreographer Matt Jensen. And the performance also features six specially commissioned pieces from Minnesota composers.

[NON-ENGLISH SINGING]

CHRIS ROBERTS: All this month on Word of Mouth, we've been showcasing Minnesota poets in honor of National Poetry Month. This week, it's Minneapolis poet and spoken word artist Desdamona reading her poem, "To Know My Mother."

DESDAMONA: I'm going back, going back to my mother's womb to exhume the blood and remnants of my sisters and brothers so that I can truly know my mother. I will travel up her belly and rest in her stomach to taste the food that she has swallowed and up her throat to her vocal chords. This is the only part of my mother that is hollow.

I will be the saliva on my mama's lips from the Diet Coke and water sips. And I will slip into her bloodstream to be the screams and steam that it took to create me. I will reach the lengths of my mother's hair so I may know her story to feel the years and tears that she gave up for me. For me.

Traveling down her veins, I will become her fingernails. And I will feel the stinging of my birth, of her birth. Then I will fluctuate into her heart so I may truly know her worth.

I will drown in the blood that pumps through her to sacrifice what she has sacrificed for me. I will be my mother's hand so that I can know the flesh of her sister's pain. And I will ride in the creases of her palms so I can know every one of her lovers names.

CHRIS ROBERTS: "To Know My Mother," a poem from Minneapolis poet and spoken word artist Desdamona. Desdamona's next performance will be this Thursday night at Sursum Corda in Minneapolis. And this is Word of Mouth.

Does immense musical talent automatically breed musical sophistication? Our test case this week is singer Alicia Renée who's turning heads and ears in Twin Cities jazz circles. It's partly because of the quality of her voice. It's partly because Alicia Renée is just 18.

[JAZZ MUSIC] L is for the way you look at me

O is for the only one I see V is very, very

CHRIS ROBERTS: A selection from Renée's jazz standards packed debut CD, Wait for Me. Renée admits she was born with an advanced musical palate. The fact, her father, musician and jazz promoter Steve Heckler rehearsed his jazz combo in their basement when she was little, helped. But Renée, a Como Park High school graduate, can't remember not liking what she refers to as strange music.

ALICIA RENÉE: Strange to me, just because everybody else was listening to pop, and rock and heavy metal. And then there's me listening to my classical and my jazz. And it was hard to find things that a lot of my friends would want to listen to. Anything that had drum loop was good for them. And so I was the odd one out, kind of like, I don't want to listen to that.

[JAZZ MUSIC] Love makes me treat you the way that I do

Gee baby, ain't I good to you? There's nothing too good

CHRIS ROBERTS: You might call Renée a trained musician. At least she's getting there. She was in every choir her high school offered.

She's taken voice lessons and music theory classes. She spent a good part of her summer last year at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. But there's no replacement for sheer talent. And at this point, Renée refuses to be pigeonholed as a musician.

ALICIA RENÉE: I don't consider myself any kind of a singer. I consider my jazz record to be, that's my jazz debut. But honestly, I like singing almost everything. as long as it has the chord structure or something that sounds good to my ear, I'll sing it.

CHRIS ROBERTS: What do you think are your talents? What are your special gifts?

ALICIA RENÉE: Well, obviously, the voice, but I also definitely came with an ear. I can hear things. I remember when I grew up, it didn't matter what we were listening to, I would harmonize it.

[JAZZ MUSIC] Unforgettable, that's what you are

Unforgettable, though near or far Like a song

CHRIS ROBERTS: Who are the female jazz singers that you look up to or male, for that matter?

ALICIA RENÉE: I went through a Judy Garland phase. She doesn't necessarily do all jazz things, but she did do some standards. And just the way that they would have her take a song was just cool. She really got into it.

And I definitely take after her and the fact that no matter how big or how small an event is, you always do 100% on the gig. Frank Sinatra obviously is a big one. Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne. I sometimes try to do impressions of her because she gets kind of silly on me.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Can you do an impression of Lena?

ALICIA RENÉE: Gosh, OK.

["STORMY WEATHER" PLAYING] Don't know why, there's no sun up in the sky

Stormy weather since my man and I ain't together Keeps raining all the time

CHRIS ROBERTS: That's amazing.

[LAUGHS]

You say you're a chameleon, and I'm wondering if it's hard being so young and hearing all these singers in your head. Is it hard to find your own voice?

ALICIA RENÉE: It was for a while. But I found that when I sang things by-- once I learned them, I would use their version to learn it. And then once I learned it, I would just sing it by myself. It seemed like the repetition made me find my own style. And now I know where it fits in my voice to sing my own way.

["SMILE" PLAYING] Smile though your heart is aching

Smile even though it's breaking When there are clouds in the sky you'll get by if you smile

CHRIS ROBERTS: Do you subscribe to the theory that you can't really be a jazz singer until you've lived a lot of life, you've gone through a lot of experiences?

ALICIA RENÉE: I suppose it would help. But as for now, some of the experiences, no matter how young I am, I have had-- I've had some-- when you're a teenager, everything is so dramatic. It's like, oh, god, my boyfriend broke up with me, I'm going to die. So I've been able to channel those feelings and make them a lot more mature than just going home and sobbing into your favorite pillow. It's like it's just taking it a step further and doing it the way that an adult would probably do.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Do you think you're uniquely talented?

ALICIA RENÉE: From the rest of the group, I think so. I think that I have something. I don't necessarily know if it's the best thing that's ever come since sliced bread, but it's definitely been a lot more than what I've ever run into.

I've even run into that same problem of not being able to find my match. I'm trying to find somebody who can come up to me and just go, yeah, well, I'm 18 and I can do this too. And it's like, oh, OK.

I haven't found anyone like that, and I've just been dying to just get my butt kicked severely. Just be like, you really-- I look at them and I go, god, I just suck. They're just rocking out and I'm just here going, yeah, I can sing.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Why do you want that to happen?

ALICIA RENÉE: Because then it'll just make me want to get to their level even more and I will improve.

CHRIS ROBERTS: 18-year-old Alicia Renée's next performance will be at the Times Bar and Grill in Minneapolis next Saturday night. Her debut CD is called Wait for Me.

ALICIA RENÉE: (SINGING) Don't know why

CHRIS ROBERTS: That's the show found on the Word of Mouth web page at minnesotapublicradio.org thanks to the efforts of webmaster [? Sarah ?] [? Lehr. ?] Word of Mouth is produced by Marianne Combs, edited by Euan Kerr. I'm Chris Roberts. Good evening.