I know I Pooteewheet and I had been going to a lot of plays and music lately. This is just a small subset of the culture lately that in some way involved Leslie Vincent or folks adjacent to Leslie like Allison and Blake.
It might be a fact that I was a little stalkery as far as attending Whoa, Nellie at the St. Paul History Theater. I saw the script title in the background of an Instagram post and wondered what Leslie was up to. When I realized it was a play and she was going to be Annie Oakley I made sure I set a reminder to get Pooteewheet and I tickets. The play was wonderful. It was all about Nellie King, a midwest criminal with issues with drinking, drugs, and more, and a habit of getting arrested for crossdressing. There are a couple books about her you can pick up from the local MNLink library loan system. The play took the form of several contemporary historical actors playing the various parts like Annie Oakley and Nellie Bly, almost like a play within a play, but with a certain amount of overlap between the actors and the historical figures. Made it very interesting, and the musical numbers were excellent.
A fun time. My folks caught a follow up performance.
More recently, we went to Mae West and Trial of Sex at the Walking Shadow directed by Leslie's wife. I wasn't sure what to expect. It came across my radar when we were watching Leslie during Art-a-whirl at the A-street Lofts and Pooteewheet bought a felt cat named Mae West. I mentioned I had noticed in my cultural feed a play was coming and when we got a flyer, Pooteewheet noticed it was being directed by Allison. We actually met the writer/producer of the play [John Heimbuch] at Whoa, Nellie, so we recognized him at Mae West as he greeted everyone at the door.
I didn't know much about Mae West, so it was a fascinating look at many of the same themes as Whoa Nellie. Although less music. In some ways, it could have passed for one of the plays I used to see at Westlaw where a lawyer did productions other lawyers could attend for CEUs [they let us go to them on work time: the Trial of Sir Thomas More and the Scopes Monkey Trial; an enjoyable break from coding].
During the first act, there's a scene from the play [that Mae wrote] within a play where a character takes a feather out of his pants to be risque. The actor's pants split and there was a pause and he quietly said, "I split my pants." He started to laugh and then recovered and moved on. Reminded me of splitting my pants at my first ever manager picnic while diving for a volleyball.
Second act I was confused about the rain soundtrack and wondered why they were including it and why it was so loud, until I realized it was the rain outside falling on the metal roof. It got so loud for a while it was actually hard to hear the actors.
A photo of a statue from the theater, unrelated to the play.
A very uncomfortable looking pipe chair. Also not related to Mae West, but an interesting piece of art to consider while eating my baklava at intermission.
More recently, like Sunday, Pooteewheet and I went up to Dual Citizen Brewing to the St. Paul Pride Fest to see Leslie and Blake do a thirty minute set. That was a very mellow Pride Fest despite all the paranoia about the political murderer still on the loose in Minnesota. Afterwards, while we were having a beer with Leslie and Allison, the news came that Eagan was on lockdown. We thought it was the the murderer on the run at first, but it was a separate incident [ironically, the cop holding a rifle in the press photos for THAT incident was - I'm fairly certain - the cop who'd been getting coffee at Dunn at the same time as us earlier that morning].
Seems obvious I should talk about the murderer. I'm not going to. Enough ink wasted on that f^%^er elsewhere.
On the way to Dual Citizen, we ended up talking to a woman who worked for Ramsey County in the nearby parking lot for 20 minutes because she heard us talking about the murders. She'd been at a funeral with Melissa the day before her murder. We talked politics, the Pride Fest, etc. Just a friendly event. Even the cops, who seemed perfectly at ease, and one of them even brought a flower into the brewery to decorate the bar counter.
The Pride Fest gave Leslie a very nice award for being part of the Festival for a number of years [I saw her at Como last year when there was a dress up parade and more].
As a final photo, I asked this guy at Pride if I could take a picture of his ankle for a friend. He was very amused. I have a coworker who loves all things octopus [pin ball machine, background in Teams meetings, more].
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