Noah Hynick of Minneapolis works at an escape room. He recommends a new play at Bryant Lake Bowl titled “The Assassination of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary Franz Ferdinand.” The play was written by Minnesota stand-up comic Joey Hamburger and is produced by Jackdonkey Productions.

“It's all about the events leading up to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand,” Hynick explains. “It's sort of a tragic comedy and follows some real things that happen as well as some not quite true things.” 

“Lots of places are still feeling the effects of COVID and everything. And now having new theaters come out, I think it's a really good chance to support smaller theaters and new art,” Hynick said.

The show runs June 14-17, with an additional performance June 22.

Amy Garretson of Rochester is the education and community outreach coordinator with the Rochester Art Center. She’s excited that a new art house movie theater has opened in the Cooke Park neighborhood of Rochester, Pop’s Art Theater.

“The type of films they're showing are either films that are shown before the wider release at the big theaters, or they're just independent cinema that you're really just not going to see screened anywhere else in southeast Minnesota,” Garretson said. “After a long drought, there's finally a place where you can go to see interesting, innovative independent cinema here in Rochester.”

Pop’s Art Theater’s screenings currently include “Dalíland,” a 2022 film about Salvador Dalí starring Ben Kingsley, and two classics of Hong Kong action cinema, “Police Story 2” with Jackie Chan and 1972’s “Fist of Fury” with Bruce Lee.

St. Paul’s Christine Sweet is a former classical music broadcaster with Classical MPR and a current member of the Twin Cities theater community. “Ladyslipper Ensemble is one of my favorite local chamber music ensembles,” she says. “And that's because every time I've been to a Ladyslipper concert, I hear something wonderful that I've never heard before — whether it's brand new or just new to me.”

She explains that Ladyslipper is “a group of four instrumentalists plus mezzo-soprano Sahar Hassan, who is its director. They typically don't perform as a quintet but in combinations of those instruments, or instruments and voice and sometimes they also have guest performers.”

The next Ladyslipper performance will include music of Gabriel Fauré and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, as well as a premiere of a new piece by Minnesota composer Carol Barnett. The event will take place June 12 at MetroNOME Brewery in St. Paul.