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ANNOUNCER: The following program is a production of
Pioneer Public Television.
[music]
NARRATOR: In this episode of Postcards.
This is what I want to do.
I want to create theatre in small towns and I want
to tell stories and I want to bring people together
and I want to remind them what they have and,
and help revitalize these communities.
I think the Grand is unique in that it's really
supported by the community.
There are a lot of small town theaters that closed
many years ago and the Grand has always had great
community support.
I can't ever remember even wanting to be a dancer I
just always was a dancer.
[Postcards theme music]
[Postcards theme music]
ANNOUNCER: This program on Pioneer
Public Television is funded by the Minnesota
Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund,
with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota
on November fourth, 2008.
Additional support provided by Mark and
Margaret-Yackel Juleen, in honor of Shalom Hill Farm,
a non-profit, rural education retreat center
in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom in
southwestern Minnesota, shalomhillfarm.org.
The Arrowwood Resort and Conference Center.
Your ideal choice for Minnesota resorts offering
luxury town homes, 18 holes of golf,
Darling Reflections Spa, Big Splash Waterpark,
and much more.
Alexandria, Minnesota, a relaxing vacation or great
location for an event.
Explorealex.com.
Easy to get to, hard to leave.
NARRATOR: PlaceBase Productions creates
stories around the history and needs of specific
communities, involving the local people and landscape
in the performances.
I'm the producer and director for PlaceBase
Productions and PlaceBase Productions is a,
is a theatre company that does site-specific
community based works of art,
interactive in nature, based on the stories of an
area, the history of the area,
and the kind of current climate of a community
looking, looking backwards in order to look forward
is the kind of goal of, of the productions that we
create.
We want to create places in small communities where
people can gather to tell their stories and reenact
their stories and find how their stories are just as
relevant to their lives today and their lives in
the future as in all of their potential futures
as, as those stories were to the past.
PlaceBase Productions comes into these small
towns is because it's, it's a passion of both
Andrew and mine to share these stories in the hopes
that we can, we can pass on that love of community
that existed in previous generations,
to highlight some of the resources that I think
oftentimes just get forgotten about to,
to reinvigorate that life force of the small town
America.
So PlaceBase has a three stage model that we follow
that we've developed over the past year and a half.
The first phase is the community research and
script development phase and at that point it's
really where we're embedding ourselves in
this community where we're talking to people that are
already gathered, and then we also hold these story
swap workshops to gather and generate as much
material as we can, so by the time that the research
phase is done, we have way more stories than we know
what to do with.
So really the hard part is whittling that down and
really picking the hour, hour and a half of stories
we want to highlight and stringing that narrative
together, which is in the script development phase
and at that junctior we are in constant dialogue
with each other, Andrew and I,
as well as with the community.
We share the script with a few folks that we've
gotten to know really well and that have a lot of the
facts in place that we can say,
"Are we accurately representing your
community" is what we're saying completely
factional, you know did we get the names right or
fictional you know how are we representing this in a
way that is true to the voice of the community and
take that feedback and some of it we apply and
some of it we, you know take artistic liberties
with.
You couldn't name your child after me?!
She's a girl captain.
Well, that's okay then.
Captain, she's beautiful!
I'm so glad we came on this trip,
even against the advice of my doctor.
I love you dearest.
We send out a call for auditions to papers all
over the area and we have two days.
I picked a different song.
Good, good!
I like different songs!
Cause it was, it was from Wicked and just like when
I heard it, it made me think of you guys so.
Yay!
Okay.
[Singing] I've heard it said that people come into
our lives for a reason.
It's a rebel or a poor pie,
or a slouch, even a fascinator long as you can
see it, because you will not catch me dead without
a hat upon my head and if I turn a couple of heads
my way, so be it.
Awesome.
Once the rehearsal process begins,
then that's the mode that I enjoy most,
time just flies by and it's,
it's working with people who I love and challenging
people and being challenged in return and
its lots of dialogue, its lots of just,
just very powerful human interactions.
[music]
I think that this, this process is
transformational in a way that is really hard to
convey.
I think in some respects me being in the position
that I'm in with the newspaper,
I'm able to get a bird's eye view of the community.
And, and you can see the ripple effect.
And I've been through it you know this again my
third time, I've seen it enough where,
where I know that the effects are going to be
profound and they're going to be positive and,
and it's going to leave the community better.
I'm excited to, to see how it manifests itself.
My name is Barb Benson.
I was Barb Lundel and our family is in the play.
I mean my dad, my grandfather even they're
quoting, or they're having be part of the play,
and my mom and dad and my sister and I.
Ashley and Andrew are great,
they just really are.
They get everybody excited and you know make it fun,
and that's good.
I think we work well together because we share
the same goals for what we're doing and our goals
relate to creating community,
building community, making great art,
working in a dialogical way.
With each production the partnering organization
that we work with has full rights to the script.
The community can access the script.
If they wanted to produce it again without us that
would be absolutely awesome and encouraged so
it belongs here because we can't mount this show
somewhere else you know it is,
it is of the landscape and it is written for the
landscape and for the people that walk through
the door at auditions, so it lives here.
This is what I want to do, I want to create theatre
in small towns and I want to tell stories and I want
to bring people together and I want to remind them
what they have and help revitalize these
communities because they can't go away.
[music]
[music]
NARRATOR: Visit pioneer.org for more
information on Postcards and other Pioneer
productions.
NARRATOR: With its art deco flair and improved
digital sound and quality, the community of Madison
takes pride in their local movie theater,
the Grand.
[music] Well I got involved in the Grand
about 20 years ago when Rick Gail,
who's the local newspaper editor came up to me and
said that he and I ought to get together and reopen
the theater which had been closed for a couple of
years.
So the city actually owned it then and the city
actually owns it now.
So Rick Gail and I formed a partnership and reopened
the theatre running it four nights
a week as we do now.
And Rick dropped out a couple of years into the
partnership after we got it going and my partner
now is Kristy Kuechenmeister is also the
office manager over at the radio station has been
with us there for 29 years so Kristy and I are the
operators of the theatre.
No we really don't make any money with the Grand
Theater.
We do it as a, as a public service.
It's kind of fun just to have something to get
people in and see some cars on,
on main street.
I guess one thing that intrigued me about the
whole thing, I kind of like the mechanical side
of the whole thing so the projectors and playing
with all the toys in the theatre was kind of
fascinating and now that we've entered into the
digital age where we have the computers,
I'm looking at computers all day at the radio
station so now we look at the computers all night
when we come over here to the Grand Theater so it's
just kind of, kind of fun little challenge to keep
it all going.
The Grand Theater opened in the early 1900s and ran
as a single screen theatre for a lot of years.
About 1939 I believe it was the film caught on
fire and the theatre burned down to the ground
and the projectionist at the time was killed in
that accident but no one else was injured.
And then in about 1941 or 1942 The Grand was built
again and operated as a single screen theatre til
probably sometime in the, in the 80s when another
screen was added and it is what it is today.
A lot of the architecture here at the Grand is from
art deco period back in the 40s and into the 50s.
Got a lot of wings and circles and kind of
geometric circles and designs and things like
that.
We try to maintain a lot of that when we did a lot
of the restructuring or rebuilding of the theatre
when the heating was added and this kind of thing.
We tried to leave a lot of the older décor in the
theater so that it would maintain the décor and a
lot of memories for people of all the,
the decorations we have on the wall.
To get the theatre into the digital age,
we started checking around to some of the companies
that do the digital conversions and getting
some price quotes and we just started raising
money, contacting people, sending letters out,
doing articles in the local paper and elsewhere
about what we were doing and we started raising
money.
I think our biggest donor of the whole project was a
$5,000 donation that came in from a former Madison
resident who now lives in California.
But most of it was done with a thousand dollar,
five hundred or a hundred dollar donations so it was
an awful lot of donations that came in to raise the,
the, it was about 106,000 we raised there and the
rest of the money coming from some city reserves,
therefore the theater.
We took about three days to do the whole
installation to remove the old equipment to get
everything new installed so it was three solid days
and we were back in business by the first
matinee we showed on a Friday afternoon.
Some of the changes we made,
we put in new screens in both theaters,
put in new masking around the screens,
did a little painting, new projection equipment,
surround sound speakers which we didn't have
before.
Before it was just an old speaker sitting behind,
one speaker sitting behind the stage and now there
are three cabinets behind each,
each screen and surround sound speakers around the
walls and several hundred watts of power and it's
like being right in the middle of it now with all
of that and the picture is nice and crystal clear
with the digital presentation.
[music]
People that come here from larger cities
are surprised how low the prices are for price of
admission.
The average price in the country I think is 12 to
15 dollars right now and we're still averaging
around five dollars here at the Grand and the
popcorn's good and it's a lot cheaper than other
places too.
[music]
I think The Grand is unique in that it's
really supported by the community.
There are a lot of small town theatres that closed
many years ago and the Grand has always had great
community support and it's just kind of a gathering
place for the community, something for the kids to do.
[music]
Some of the people that have donated money
for it probably haven't ever set,
set foot in it but they see the importance of
having a movie theatre in their community as
something that other communities don't have.
I remember coming here with my folks in the 50s.
We'd come and watch Three Stooges,
and Ma Pa Kettle, and a lot of Westerns,
really enjoyed them.
We moved to Madison when I was five and I've been
going here ever since.
I like coming to the Grand Theatre because I get
candy and slushies and I get to see movies.
It's local.
It's locally run locally so we don't have to drive
a hundred miles to see a nice movie and have fun
and, very reasonable.
It's not very far and it's very convenient just to go
with my friends whenever we feel like it like a Friday night.
See a movie at the Grand Theater in Madison,
MN, showing Friday, September 13th through
Monday, September 16th in theater one its Disney's
"Planes" rated PG.
Animated kid's comedy, that's "Planes" PG in
theater one.
And in theater two, Matt Damon and Jodie Foster
star in the science fiction fantasy,
"Elysium."
That's "Elysium" rated R in theater two.
Show times seven and nine Friday and Saturday,
once nightly at seven and Sunday and Monday at the Grand.
NARRATOR: Do you have an idea for the Postcards
team? Email us. postcards@pioneer.org
NARRATOR: Find out why
Sara Konsbruck decided to leave her master's degree
behind and instead spends her time sharing her love
of dance and fitness with young and old alike.
I don't even know why I started dancing.
I was three years old.
I, I'm sure it was something that my parents
signed me up for thinking that I would enjoy not,
I'm sure not realizing that it would turn into
almost a career for me.
[music]
Did I always think I was a good dancer?
Um, no.
I think when I finally getting really confident
in my dancing wasn't until college where I was able
to just be really comfortable in my own skin
and feel good on stage.
I was a school counselor for two years part-time
and I had to travel to get to the school that had
hired me, and the travel just turned too much.
You know it was, I was doing the school
counseling thing two days a week.
I was working in the town where I lived for a couple
days a week, I was waitressing on the
weekends, teaching dance and fitness in the
evenings, it was, it was insane.
It was just so much so this year I decided that
something had to go and, and it was the school
counseling thing strangely enough even though that's
what I had my degree in and what I had worked for
all of college and all of grad school it just,
I didn't love it as much as I love dancing.
I do like to work.
I like to be busy I think is the better description.
I don't, being, standing still is just not
something that I was ever really good at so and I
just happen to work a lot.
I'm learning that there are other important things
besides work.
Relationships being one of them so a new relationship
has made me realize like I can slow down and I can
stop and smell the roses more or less.
The studio that I teach at locally is called
Footnotes Studio of Dance and Footnotes has been
around since 2004 where actually my best friend
opened, opened the doors our senior year in college
so we were both college seniors working to finish
our degrees and my friend decided she needed to open
a dance studio so I stood by here and helped her out
with the knowledge that I was going to be leaving
and going to grad school the following year.
So I helped her open that up and taught with her,
worked with her very closely on that.
She continued running the studio while I was in grad
school and then when I ended up coming back to
town, she welcomed me back with open arms and was
really excited to have me teaching for her again so yeah.
When I was in college, I was a member of a student
organization called Dance Ensemble and through my
four years of college I choreographed for them and
then I spent a year as the co-chair of the organization.
Then now coming back to town,
the organization has asked me to choreograph for them.
So for the last, this will be the third year in a row
now that I've been the guest choreographer for
Dance Ensemble.
Not only am I working with young dancers age fourth
grade to twelfth grade but I'm also working with
college students and, and teaching dance that way too.
I am a licensed Zumba instructor and Zumba is a
dance fitness class that emphasizes Latin dance and
Latin styles, but that's not all it is.
It's really an international dance and
international music style of fitness class.
It's, it's a lot of fun.
You can incorporate tons of different dance styles,
tons of different music styles,
some things that are top 40 pop music,
then you've got a salsa song that is 20 years old
or you can incorporate just about anything and
call it Zumba.
I love teaching Zumba especially to non-dancers
because somebody who was a basketball player growing
up will come to class and be really successful,
or somebody who had never really done a lot of
sports or fitness types of things will come to a
Zumba class and leave with a big smile on their face
and that's, that's what I love about Zumba.
[music]
I just, I'm not a dancer but whenever I do
Zumba I feel like I can dance.
I love Sara's Zumba cause she has so much fun doing
it like, just her face like you can see on her
face that she just loved what she's doing.
[music]
It's been a long time but I did come to the
very first class and I've loved it ever since.
It actually motivated me to start working out
because it actually is a fun workout,
she makes it enjoyable, she makes it energetic and
she just does a great job and it's,
it's a lot of fun.
For dance I do all my own choreography.
I will get inspiration from different things or,
or see maybe another group did a similar style and,
and borrow ideas from that.
I, I really like getting ideas from young dancers.
They come up with some pretty crazy stuff but
once in awhile, something that they do or a way that
they move will inspire a combination or a movement
for me in the choreography.
[music]
I can't ever remember even wanting to
be a dancer; I just always was a dancer.
I started dancing when I was three and pretty much
never stopped.
[music]
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[Singing] "One, two, one, two,
one, two, three four."
[music]
"Well I said life's a drag but not mine,
but not mine.
Although my walls empty most the time.
All the sun was shinin' on my back.
Well listen to the sound of them old smoke stacks.
And I'll never know which way I ought to go.
I raise one finger to the wind and it's down the
road I go.
Soon you're feeling down in doubts,
oh don't you fret and don't you pout,
when I hear the people say,
'Time's are hard the skies are gray,
oh I'll be singing life's a drag but not mine."
[music]
[music]
[music]
[Singing] "Hey I said life's a drag but not
mine, but not mine.
Although the market's always in decline,
you see I don't own a fancy car,
them old houses, they're made of golden bars.
Oh well this old session man it gives me the
impression that some folks must learn a lesson cause
I can't feel a thing.
Oh so your bank account is low,
and you're feeling like there ain't no place to
go, oh when I hear the people say,
'Time's are hard, skies are gray,
I'll be singing life's a drag but not mine."
[music]
[music]
[music]
[Singing] "Hey I said life's a drag but not
mine, but not mine.
Oh I left home when I was five.
Peddling down the road on tempered steel,
my legs too short to ride an automobile.
Oh it was sad seeing me go,
I saw my face on telephone poles,
I raise one finger to the wind and it's down the
road I go.
So when you're feeling down and doubts,
don't you fret and don't you pout.
When I hear the people say,
'Time's are hard, skies are gray,
I'll be singing life's a drag but not mine,
oh no, I'll be singing life's a drag but not mine."
[music]
[Singing] "He cut her in half with a shiny
steel saw, he put her all back together and I was in
awe as rabbits, and doves, and bandanas appeared,
and he pulled a quarter right out of my ear.
And I turned to my dad and I said,
'How'd he do it?' And my daddy just laughed and he
said," As soon as the helicopter passes I'll
tell you. "There's nothin' to it.
It's magic and you don't want to know just how it's
done, it would ruin the show.
You just got to believe cause believing is what
makes it happen.
Oh it's nothing but magic, magic,
magic," That's your part to sing with me,
"Its magic, its magic, its magic.
I fell in love the first time in eighth grade and I
started shaving the very next day.
ANNOUNCER: This program on Pioneer Public Television
is funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
With money from the vote of the people of Minnesota
on November fourth, 2008.
Additional support provided by Mark and
Margaret-Yackel Juleen, in honor of Shalom Hill Farm,
a non-profit, rural education retreat center
in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom in
southwestern Minnesota, shalomhillfarm.org.
The Arrowwood Resort and Conference Center.
Your ideal choice for Minnesota resorts offering
luxury town homes, 18 holes of golf,
Darling Reflections Spa, Big Splash Waterpark,
and much more.
Alexandria, Minnesota, a relaxing vacation or great
location for an event.
Explorealex.com.
Easy to get to, hard to leave.
[Postcards theme music]
Captioned by Pioneer
Public Television 2014
[Postcards theme music]