Starting Gate Productions is a small professional theater company based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Starting Gate performs mainly contemporary classic plays, mostly by American authors, though they make occasional forays into classical texts. The company emphasizes its production values—which tend to be very high compared to other small theater companies in the Twin Cities--and its development of actors through workshops. [1] Starting Gate produced a large number of shows in its first few season and gained early success with critics and audiences. [2] Recently, the producers in the company turned their attention to securing Equity actors for some of their productions. [3]
Saint Paul is the capital and second-most populous city of the U.S. state of Minnesota. As of 2017, the city's estimated population was 309,180. Saint Paul is the county seat of Ramsey County, the smallest and most densely populated county in Minnesota. The city lies mostly on the east bank of the Mississippi River in the area surrounding its point of confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Minneapolis, the state's largest city. Known as the "Twin Cities", the two form the core of Minneapolis–Saint Paul, the 16th-largest metropolitan area in the United States, with about 3.6 million residents.
Starting Gate opened its debut season in 2002 at the Loading Dock Theater as one of the few theater companies based in downtown St. Paul. [4] The company performed there until 2005, when it transferred to the newly renovated Mounds Theatre in St. Paul's Dayton's Bluff Neighborhood. [5]
Don Eitel (founding member) Richard Jackson (founding member) Stephen Frethem (founding member) Ben Chadwick (founding member) John Raabe (founding member)
David Coral Mark Webb Ben Tallen
2004 Best Twin Cities Theaters -Minneapolis/St. Paul Magazine
2002-2003:A Lie of the Mind; Play It Again, Sam; Death of a Salesman; Jeffrey
2003-2004:This is Our Youth (review 1; review 2); Period of Adjustment; Little Murders (review); Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean; The Grapes of Wrath
2004-2005:Akespeareshay; Equus (review); Inspecting Carol (review); Prelude to a Kiss (review); Richard III
2005-2006:Man Saved By Condiments (review); Godspell; A Raisin in the Sun; Butterflies are Free; The Boys in the Band(review) [6]
2006-2007:A View From the Bridge; P.S. Your Cat Is Dead; Amadeus; True West; King Lear
2007-2008:The Little Foxes; Anton In Show Business; The Sign In Sidney Brustein's Window; The Hollow
The Minnesota Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded in 1903, the Minnesota Orchestra plays most of its concerts at Minneapolis's Orchestra Hall.
Target Center is a multi-purpose arena located in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota. Target Center hosts major family shows, concerts, sporting events, graduations and private events. Target Corporation is the original and current naming rights partner of the arena. Seating over 20,000 for a concert, it contains 702 club seats and 68 suites.
The Star Tribune is the largest newspaper in Minnesota. It originated as the Minneapolis Tribune in 1867 and the competing Minneapolis Daily Star in 1920. During the 1930s and 1940s Minneapolis's competing newspapers were consolidated, with the Tribune published in the morning and the Star in the evening. They merged in 1982, creating the Star Tribune. After a tumultuous period in which the newspaper was sold and re-sold and filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009, it was purchased by local businessman Glen Taylor in 2014.
Circus Juventas is a youth performing arts circus school located in Saint Paul, Minnesota, serving youth throughout the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area. The organization was founded in 1994 by Dan and Betty Butler, and offers circus arts training to young people ranging from 3 to 21 years old.
Theodore Raymond "T. R." Knight is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Dr. George O'Malley on the ABC medical drama Grey's Anatomy. Having acted on stage since the age of five, Knight had starred on Broadway, off-Broadway, and theatre productions in his home state of Minnesota. He received a Drama Desk Award nomination for his performance in MCC Theater's Scattergood in 2003.
Christopher B. "Chris" Coleman is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 54th Mayor of Saint Paul, Minnesota between 2006 and 2018. He defeated incumbent mayor Randy Kelly in 2005 and took office on January 3, 2006. He was later succeeded by city councilman Melvin Carter on January 2, 2018
In 1912, the first assembly and sales activities were started in a former warehouse in Minneapolis by Ford Motor Company. By 1925, the Twin Cities Assembly Plant had relocated next to the Mississippi River in the Highland Park neighborhood of St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It was in operation from 1925 to 2011. At the time of its closure, it was the oldest Ford plant still in operation.
Joe Dowling is an Artistic Director. He was artistic director for the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. He is well known for his work as Artistic Director of the Abbey Theatre in Ireland and his production involvement can be found in the Abbey Theatre archives. He has also directed plays in all the major theatres in Ireland as well as theatres in London, New York, Washington D.C., Montreal, and Alberta.
Skewed Visions is an arts company headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota which produces site-specific performances and other multimedia works. Formed in 1996, by the artists Charles Campbell, Gülgün Kayim and Sean Kelley-Pegg, the group produces site-specific works that have sometimes been seen as controversial. The group may be best known for The Car, a 2000 performance that took place in cars driven by actors with the audience as passengers. Additionally, Skewed Visions has created original performances for a variety of sites including theaters, office buildings, a rooftop observatory, a former marble factory, a house, a storefront window, a former bombsite factory, a pedestrian shopping mall, and a farmer's market.
The Minnesota Fringe Festival is a performing arts festival held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, every summer, usually during the first two weeks in August. The eleven-day event, which features performing artists of many genres and disciplines, is one of many Fringe Festivals in North America. Minnesota Fringe is the largest nonjuried festival in the United States and the third-largest Fringe festival in North America. In 2013, Minnesota Fringe ran August 1–11 and featured 176 shows with a total of 895 performances in multiple venues around the city and distributed 50,007 tickets over the eleven-day event. In 2007, attendance and box office revenue were adversely affected by the collapse of the I-35W bridge the day before the festival opened.
Gremlin Theatre is a small, non-profit, professional theatre company based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Gremlin primarily performs actor-centered plays in the classic American style of realism, seeking, as their mission statement reads, "to provide artistically brilliant, accessible, and enjoyable theatrical experiences." Recently, Gremlin has turned its attention to producing new plays by local Twin Cities playwrights and to bringing Equity actors into their casts. They are the resident company at the Loading Dock a small theater space which was constructed out of an unused warehouse/loading space in the basement of the Renaissance Box, a former warehouse in St. Paul that has been retrofitted into an arts/office complex. The Renaissance Box staff credits the staff of Gremlin with all of the work it took to create the Loading Dock, which has played home to other small theatre companies in the Twin Cities, including Starting Gate Productions and Theatre Pro Rata.
Theatre Pro Rata is a small, professional theatre company operating in the Twin Cities, United States. The company's name is derived from the term pro rata, which comes from the Latin for "in proportion." Their mission: To each of us: a foundation in the play, a pursuit of creative excellence, and a continuation of curiosity.
John Cowles Jr. was an American editor and publisher, son of John Cowles Sr. (1898–1983). Cowles sat on the boards of directors of the Associated Press and Columbia University's Pulitzer Prizes and had been CEO of Cowles Media Company, founded by his grandfather and until 1998 the parent of the Star Tribune.
Walking Shadow Theatre Company is a Minneapolis-based professional non-profit theatre company which was founded in 2004 by John Heimbuch, Amy Rummenie and David Pisa with the following aims: to develop the talents of its artists, to nurture audience commitment to the arts, to facilitate dialogue within the community and to examine local culture in a global context. The company's name comes from Act V, Scene V of William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Heimbuch and Rummenie currently serve as the company's Artistic Directors; Pisa currently serves as the company's Executive Director.
Minnesota Mr. Basketball is an annual award recognizing excellence in Minnesota boys' high school basketball. The female equivalent is Minnesota Miss Basketball.
Delrae Knutson is a stage actress and singer from Minnesota, USA specializing in musical comedy. She started her career in 1981 and has performed in theaters throughout the United States and Canada, though most of her work has been in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota, USA.
Lou Bellamy is an American stage director, actor, producer, entrepreneur, and educator. He is the founder and artistic director, Emeritus of Penumbra Theatre Company in St. Paul, Minnesota. He taught at the University of Minnesota from 1979 until his retirement as an associate professor in 2011.
The Padelford Riverboat Company, established in 1969, is the sole provider of river boat cruises within the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area in the Twin Cities of the U.S. State of Minnesota. Padelford boats cruise on the Mississippi River and celebrate the history of the region.