Planning begins months before a performance is staged

By Rebecca Petersen | The Daily Journal

Published Saturday, October 27, 2007

Plans for this week’s coming events started months ago. For instance, “Gales of November,” coming to Fergus Falls Nov. 1, has been in the works for almost a year now and this weekend tech people from The Fitzgerald Theater (home of A Prairie Home Companion) will be here setting lights and setting the stage for another dynamite performance.

The cool thing about technical theater is, that when it’s done really well, you don’t even notice it. For instance, the lighting designer for “Songs from the Tall Grass,” wrote 150 different lighting cues into that show. I’ll bet you didn’t notice, did you?

And guess what? The lighting designer for “Gales” is the same, one and only Mike Wangen who did the light plot for “Songs.”

Mike is amazing. He’s like a visual artist, only he paints with light. And the technical director for “Gales of November,” is the infamous, Alan Frechtman, who also worked on “Songs from the Tall Grass.”

And helping organize and coordinate all of this on our end is our own local LeAnne Jaenisch.

Interestingly enough, these are the people who never get noticed, because they’re so good at what they do you don’t even notice them. They’re the behind the scenes folks and without them, well, the show would be good, it just wouldn’t be great.

But, “Gales of November” will be a great show because we have all the right elements going into it. We have a great tech crew and we have a great cast.

Come and see what can happen when you put all these people on stage with all the great “behind-the scenes” elements.

Singers Prudence Johnson, Claudia Schmidt and Ruth MacKenzie deliver an amazing vocal performance in solos, trios and duets.

Band members Dan Chouinard, Peter Ostroushko, Eric Peltoniemi and Jeff Willkomm are some of the best in Minnesota and storyteller Kevin Kling, well, what can I say about Kevin? He is one of my favorite artists in the whole, wild world. He was here a few years ago to do his one-man storytelling show “Freezing Paradise.”

I’d love it if he could come back and do that again. In the meantime we’re lucky to get him back next week as part of “Gales of November.”

Then there’s Bill Staines, the traveling troubadour of the century. While many folks compare him to The Pete Seeger of their generation, I prefer to think of Bill Staines as the glue between several generations. He’s a singer/songwriter so proficient and accomplished that, again, you don’t notice him.

But singer/songwriters all over the country sing and play his music. Bill has been here before and I would invite him to Fergus Falls anytime he’s in the area because he’s an icon. He’s one of the roots of American folk music. You just don’t get a chance to be exposed to that kind of width and breadth of music every day.

And another interesting fact about Bill Staines he changes all of his guitar strings before every concert. (Goodness, I only change my violin strings a couple of times a year.) Bill’s concert is Friday, Nov. 2. I know, it’s a lot in one week. My biggest problem is saying no to some of the best talent around.

And Rena is picking some of the best films that are out there. This week we continue with “In The Shadow of The Moon,” which isn’t being released to most theaters until the weekend of Nov. 2. Way to go Rena. I don’t know how she does it. The following week, starting Nov. 4, “Into The Wild” will start a two-week run.

One last thing — On the literary front: Children’s Author, Debra Frasier visits Fergus Falls Monday and Tuesday. (Thanks to Dawn Ackley in the public schools) At 3 p.m. on Sunday A Center for the Arts Presents! — Free and Open to the Public — her film with The Minnesota Orchestra “On The Day You Were Born,” with a personal introduction by Debra and a book signing to follow.

She’ll also be at The Fergus Falls Public Library on Monday from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.

On Tuesday, October 30, Dr. Richard Kagan will talk about his new book on Taiwan at 10 a.m. at The Community College and 7 p.m. at The Kaddatz Hotel for our Inaugural Fergus Falls Humanities Forum.

Rebecca Petersen is the director of A Center for the Arts in Fergs Falls.