Nina, Hans-Georg

This and the next few posts are ones that I wrote on paper during my stay at Whitewater state park but didn't have web access/time before I left on a two week trip to Beijing where I discovered, not surprisingly, that my blog site was blocked by the government filters there. I have now been back in town a few days and have been catching up on some organization and getting ready for the first performance dates at Banning State Park which begin this Thursday the 12th.

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July 15th 2010, Twin Cities


I should spend a little time talking about my friends who visited from Germany today, Hans-Georg and Nina. They are both involved in theater, Hans-Gyorg being the Dramaturg of the Bremen Opera and Nina being a site-specific theater director who does projects around the globe. I have known them for quite some time and met Nina during my time in Krakow, Poland in 1997. Since then we have kept in touch and often times bounced idea off each other as we embarked on various projects so it seemed fitting that they should visit during my prep work. They had in fact, been planning to visit me in Chicago and even though it took them out of their way on their trip from Chicago to New Orleans, they decided to fly up to Minnesota for a few days to see what it was all about.

As you can imagine, I will be putting them to work. But first, I had to show them a bit of the city and even though they were still getting over jetlag, they somehow had the will power to deal with the Mall of America and its many indoor amusement delights including a green roller coaster called the orange streak and shops with names such as "Justice: Just for Girls" and "Cinnamonster" which you can imagine they had a field day with. Then, a trip to lake Nokomis for a swim and dinner with my family which ended with a fantastic Pear Schnapps that they brought from France as a gift to my parents for their hospitality. Good times.

I am so glad that they could make it and look forward very much to getting their perspective on the Song Path. Nina has never been shy about making me and others around her question and dissect their own artistic motivations and I I look forward to seeing their response to what I am doing here now.