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(woman) Minnesota Original is made possible by
The Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund,
and the citizens of Minnesota.
Dobro, guitar, bass, & drums play in bright rhythm
music only; no vocals
Alright, these are really weird.
doing vocal exercises using her stomach muscles
doing a controlled tone exercise
Pop-pop-pa, ba-ba-ba, pop-pop-pa, ba-ba-ba,
Pop-pop-pa, ba-ba-ba, pop-pop-pa, ba-ba-ba
One of my acting mentors said,
you know, to have a sense of generosity
to any character you play, so figure out
what parts of your life you can lend to the character,
whether it's vulnerability, whether it's life experience.
I try to find those parallels first,
and then whatever I don't know,
I try to figure out a way into.
It's fun, you know, I mean,
I've been doing this for almost 20 years,
and so now, I'm gonna challenge myself,
like if I'm gonna play a CEO of a company,
why not call some folks downtown
and say can I come and interview you?
I mean, that's the best thing about theater
is just opening up worlds
that you wouldn't be exposed to otherwise.
You know, I think, I mean, playing Oberon
with Ten Thousand Things has been great
because I get to embrace being this,
laughs the king of the universe basically!
Thou seest these lovers seek a place to fight
hie therefore, Robin, overcast the night with drooping fog!
It's just exploring different parts of life,
exploring different parts internally of yourself,
and every role changes you in the future.
I started out acting because it was just fun,
and now, as I get older, I think I'm an actor
just because I feel there's so many stories
that really need to be told.
My American name is Rachel Sun Mee Chomet.
My Korean name was Ahn Sun Mee.
I was 6 months old when I was
given up for adoption.
I didn't anticipate becoming a playwright,
but especially as an Asian American actor,
you tend towards writing
in order to create parts that are not written yet.
I feel passionate about telling stories
from the diversity of what it means to be American.
Sun Mee laughs
Well, there really is no information
about your birth family Rachel.
It says you were found in the City of Anyang
then you were sent to stay with foster mother in Seoul
for 6 months before you left for United States.
The most recent play that I've written is
How to Be a Korean Woman.
I felt a need to write this just to process my search
and reunion with my birth family.
What do I want to tell my birth mother?
I think about you and wonder why you gave me up.
I'd like to see you, and I hope you'll contact me
because I want to find you.
I always had this feeling that if I'd met my birth family,
some void would be filled about wanting to know who you are
and what your history was, and what I was shocked to find out
was that I still felt a void after I was reunited.
My acting story starts in Detroit Public Schools,
at Burton International Elementary.
That was my first exposure to theater,
and that was what I thought theater was--
it was a place to imagine.
I went to a performing arts high school,
and my favorite acting teachers said to me, you know Sun Mee,
you should prepare yourself because you're Asian,
to only play old people or character parts
because you will never be considered as a leading lady.
And I thought that was so depressing.
The Twin Cities is where I broke out of that mentality,
working with Mu Performing Arts.
If I hadn't developed at that theater company,
where Asian Americans were at the center,
I would have never been able to develop as a leading woman.
Having performed on stages throughout the U.S.
and after being in New York,
I knew I wanted to create my own work,
and I knew I wanted to have the time and support
and energy to be able to write.
And in the Twin Cities, your fellow artists and colleagues
value you, and not only want to work with you,
they want to see you thrive. That's what brought me back.
I think it's not only what brought me back to the Twin Cities,
it's what brought me back into who I am as an artist.
All my life I've imagined what this doorstep
where I was left looked like.
Here I am...
and this is all it is,
a metal door of a cement block apartment with no one home.
The process of translating the story of my search
and reunion with my birth family to the page was not easy,
and Zaraawar Mistry, my director, and dramaturg
was instrumental in that process.
He would tell me to just go away and write
and don't edit at all.
As a result, there would come pages and pages
of me just saying how confused I was.
You know, I would go on really on tirades sometimes,
just how upset I was at the Korean government,
about adoption being promoted
without any rights given to the birth mothers,
and he would say, That exists in the human story,
so let's just focus on the humanity
and your personal story. and let all of that come through.
I didn't trust him at first, honestly.
I said, But I really want to say this,
I really need to say this!
He said, You're saying it by just telling your story.
Suddenly I am being held and cuddled by my blood relatives.
My Umma holds both of my hands to her chest as she speaks.
She holds onto my thigh as we talk.
My grandmother pours her body into mine,
holding onto my arm, refusing to let go.
Somehow... my muscle memory remembers this feeling
and has been crawling back towards it all of my life.
So I've performed How to Be a Korean Woman
at Dreamland Arts in St. Paul, the Guthrie Theater.
I also performed it in Philadelphia
at Asian Arts Initiative.
I performed it in Seoul, Korea
at the International Korean
Adoptees Association's Conference
for about 300 Korean adoptees from 17 different countries.
The reaction from the adoptee community,
not only Korean adoptees,
but from the wider adoptee community, was overwhelming.
There are over 30,000 Asian adoptees in Minnesota,
which means everyone knows, is married to,
partnered with, or works with an adoptee.
I think though the show resonated for them
because for the first time, I think many of them
saw themselves reflected onstage.
My Umma is looking down at my hands and crying.
I just wish... we had the time...
lifetime.
You know, you can't change your story;
not everyone even wants to change their story,
although some do, but regardless,
you want to understand your own story.
I mean, the more you know who you are as a human being,
with your own biography,
the better you're going to be as an artist.
I don't want to waste any time, you know,
not because I want to get to a certain place,
but because there's so many ideas
and stories that I want to tell.
banjo plays
(Kurt Seaberg) I traveled to Norway in 2009
and I was in this town called Kautokeino,
way above the Arctic Circle.
It's a heavily populated with Sami people,
and I walked into this bar and the first thing I saw was,
is that my artwork?
It was framed and on the wall and it just blew me away
because I had no idea.
So Sami Land or Spmi is the northern part of Scandinavia
and it spreads across 4 countries,
Norway, Sweden, Finland, and part of Russia.
But the Sami are the indigenous people of this area.
They've been there for at least 10 perhaps 20 thousand years,
and they're considered to be the only indigenous group of people
still living in Europe.
I started making Sami images;
I was working on a Sami American newsletter
with a number of people who also had Sami in their heritage,
making illustrations.
Plus my father was a visual artist too
and he made a lot of portraits of Sami people
and so I think I got inspired by that.
So it was all one piece;
I was starting to learn about my own background,
I was learning about the Sami people.
After I'd compiled, you know, a good number of illustrations,
I hit on this idea of well, I could make a calendar
and use my own illustrations along with my father's.
And I made it a bilingual calendar,
and it was in English and Sami.
I started collecting historical facts and important dates
of famous Sami cultural figures and things
and I kept doing this every year, and I would learn more
and I kept adding more information to the calendar,
wrote little stories, and I had pictographs
of ancient Sami rock carvings and symbols off the Sami drum
and I just kept adding all this stuff to it and pretty soon,
I'd put together a, it was almost like a book,
you know, and people started using it
like an educational tool at schools in Norway and Sweden.
They would write back to me and say
oh, we use your calendar in our classes.
And cause they would tell me that, you know,
we've never seen anything like this,
to have all this information all in one place.
And that was a great compliment to hear that.
guitars play in bright rhythm
(Robin Schwartzman) We always think of mini golf as sort of this experience
where the mini golf ball goes on a journey
and you as the player gets to sort of live vicariously
through that mini golf ball, so as the player, you can't fit
into all these little nooks and crannies, but your mind
sort of goes on a journey with the mini golf balls.
(Scott Stulen) So the Artist-Designed Mini Golf Course
is a mini golf course obviously designed by artists,
and it's all local Minnesota artists
that have designed the course.
Basically it's a spin on traditional mini golf.
So it has a total of 27 artists
and it's over the course of 15 holes.
The Walker's always been interested in pop art
and popular culture and ways we can kind of bring that
into the things that we do, and we're also interested
in different ways of audience engagement.
Well, the first one came back in 2003
and with the success of that course
became a lot of clamoring for doing it again,
and the second course actually was in 2008.
And this summer, with the 25th anniversary
of the Sculpture Garden, it seemed like
an appropriate time to bring it back.
We did a call for artists to come in
and produce the designs, and they go before senior curators,
including myself, to be selected for this course.
Two of our artists, Tom Loftus and Robin Schwartzman
are mini golf experts; they're local here,
they produced the watering can hole for the course.
They also write for a blog called A Couple of Putts,
which they developed, which reviews mini golf courses,
both regionally and nationally.
(Tom) Okay. (Robin) Don't mess this one up.
(Tom) Yeah, yeah, yeah.
clattering of the golf ball
Our first date was at a mini golf course together
and we both really enjoyed the sport
before we met each other,
and then we decided that we liked doing it together.
So we were just playing on dates,
then it kind of turned into, well, we're doing this enough,
why don't we start blogging about it?
There you go.
(Tom) Our hole is called Can You Handle This?
and the reason is twofold.
One is that it talks about the element of skill that's involved,
and the other is that if you can't handle this,
we gave an option for people
to shoot to a hole to the side of it.
So a lot went into the actual construction of the hole.
Building something that has to be outside for 3 months
is a challenge within itself, but then also considering
that 50,000 people are going to be playing it and touching it
and you've got an audience of all ages holding a golf club,
is kind of tricky to work around,
so you have to really think about durability and material.
It's holding up good considering.
concertina plays in waltz time
(Scott) We asked the University of Minnesota
to produce two of the holes; one was Mega Golf,
so it's basically this really giant golf ball
that has a small-scale version of the Walker campus
that you putt around on the inside of it.
Then the second one they did is this Ames Room,
which is kind of an optical illusion
where you putt into this space
that seems like a small room but with a slanted floor.
And depending on where you stand in there, you'll appear
either really large or really small in perspective.
This year I will say the artists did an exceptional job of making
not only aesthetically pleasing holes,
but holes that played very well
and function really well as an overall course.
(Robin) Well, I think this course is special for us
as mini golf lovers and bloggers
because it's a really unique local course.
The idea of having a temporary one that's designed
by many different people within one course makes it
special in a way that-- one of the commercially run ones--
you know, it's sort of either made by a company
or all made by the same voice or vision,
so this has a lot of variety.
The fact that it's temporary makes it special
because you can only play it within a certain period of time
and then it's gone forever.
stringed instrument plays
(Paul Metzger) I was in a rock band, and I remember this dude,
he had really fancy stuff, I'm like man,
you've got nice fancy gear.
a high-pitched resonant sound
This is a little Ikea mixing bowl;
this is like a drain, drain cover.
And then I have a big spring.
And then he said, If you want to make good music,
you need to have good equipment,
and I just completely disagree with that.
banjo plays deep bass and high-pitched tones in bright rhythm
I'm self-taught how to play music.
I wasn't interested in learning how to play the banjo;
I just like the sound of it.
I was listening to a lot of Indian music
and the sarod is a bit like a banjo;
it has a certain kind of sound similar to this.
And so I started to add strings to it to kind of come closer
to what a sarod sounds like, and that way I have maybe
some unorthodox techniques of like
bowing a banjo to me is real natural.
deep resonant bass tone accompanies high-pitched bowed sustained tones
This is the third version of the banjo,
so it has a total of 23 strings.
I have 13 of these.
These are like sympathetic strings; they resonate
when you play the same or a related note.
It's just, I want it all to be just what it is--
just very honest.
clicking of springs being wound
producing tones of different pitch
It started with just changing instruments.
tinkling of music box movements
Just like adding an extra tuner,
you know, just to see what happens.
bass tone and tinkling of music box movements
It's the sound of the unexpected, which I like.
This is a machine that I made
out of a bunch of music box mechanisms
and they've all been manipulated
and kind of broken in different ways.
I think just the benefit of having something
that I've created or manipulated or changed around;
I just feel a little closer to it.
My wife plays violin so I've always wanted
to make an instrument for her.
I just make stuff for friends of mine, you know,
people that I love that are musicians.
And it might sound awful.
I know it'll always have something,
it'll have a certain unique character.
So I took a gourd and just cut it in half
and then put those two halves together,
and then I put a skin head on this end.
makes a bongo-like sound
And this is just wood sharp tapping
with small gourds as little amplifiers.
I like an instrument that has something to it, you know,
that you want to look at it and hold it
and it can be your friend, you know, like this one.
So then, I'll just let this dry in there,
and then I can string it up.
For me, improvisation, I sometimes think of it
like going on a nature walk--
is stepping off the set path
for an opportunity to experience something unexpected.
It becomes more about music as shapes and colors.
Being open to not finding something is a big part of it.
It's just everything to me.
rapid percussive tones
I just like to have junk around, random stuff.
This is a banjo bridge or pieces that I've made out of bone,
and little, you know, fixtures and stuff I like,
and pieces of fret wire... what is that?
Genuine ivory from the top of an old piano.
I would say most of it is just stuff;
none of it is really purchased that much as a new thing,
tuners, piano wire, a mandolin neck,
and then I have other, like small gourds.
When I'm really workin' on something in the basement,
I honestly pretend and believe in my head,
that I'm an Old World craftsman.
I think it kind of gives me like some odd false confidence,
which I like, false confidence,
to go ahead and do things that I don't know how to do.
I'm pretty far from
a conservatory-trained Julliard person.
If you have something in you to express,
it's like a poet that doesn't have a big vocabulary,
but has a big soul,
it doesn't matter because it'll come through.
Let's say a piece of music, right, a set piece,
a written composition-- anybody can learn how to play that.
I'm not interested in what someone can do,
but I'm very interested in who they are.
CC--Armour Captioning & TPT
(woman) Minnesota Original
is made possible by
The Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund
and the citizens of Minnesota.
orchestral fanfare