Frostbite weekend packed with follies, films

By Rebecca Petersen | The Daily Journal

Published Saturday, January 26, 2008

Everyone is gearing up for Frostbite Festival. Based on the weather this past week, we’re right on track for a little cold weather fun.

Of course, in this fickle part of the country, weather means everything and the fact that it could change for better or worse at any moment could easily have an impact on next weekend.

For A Center for the Arts we have opportunities both inside and outside so we hope you can work some of the following into your schedule.

Every year we put together two of our own vaudeville shows — a summer show and a winter show. In the winter we always plan The Fergus Falls Frostbite Follies to coincide with Frostbite Festival. So, Saturday night, Feb. 2, at 7 p.m. join us at The Theater downtown for some jollies and follies.

Featured on this show are some old favorites and new “soon-to-be” favorites. Host David Stoddard will guide you through the history and antics of vaudeville and vaudevillians. (Not to be confused with villains — that’s in a later paragraph.)

Our own local vaudevillians will include jugglers, Jake and Sam Steen, the second-grader accordionist extraordinaire, Bo Anderson, Dr. Richard Kagan, mime, Dingo the singing dog, headliner musician Mikko Cowdry, The Mighty WurliTzer Theatre Organ, The Laurie Strom String Trio with the addition of Kazoos and Dave Strom, and a short silent movie.

Tickets are general seating and you can’t beat the price. In advance tickets are $5 for adults, $2 for students; and $15 for the household

Day of the show, they are $6/$3/$20.

Also on Saturday, A Center for the Arts is holding a snow sculpture competition at Cleveland Park just south of Cleveland School. You can pre-register at A Center for the Arts.

If it’s a really cold day, we’ll also be showing free movies at A Center for the Arts. Here’s where the villain part comes in because the movies we’ll be showing have the very famous villains Boris and Natasha, and some pretty famous heroes as well.

You may have guessed it. They also live in Frostbite Falls.

Finally, continuing with our new promise to be more intentional, we’re turning the day into one of our Center Saturdays.

We’re hoping to do more Saturday programming that will offer opportunities for cultural affairs and party planning — in other words, the arts and social time.

So, this month, we’ve asked The Union Café to serve up some tasty morsels between 5 and 7 p.m. downtown so you can peruse the artwork, socialize and get something to eat between the daytime activities and the evening activities down here at A Center for the Arts. The cost is $5 per person and includes finger foods and a beverage.

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