Southern Theater Hosts 6th Annual Benefit Cabaret and Auction, March 6

The Southern Theater will host Southern Exposure 2010, its 6th annual benefit cabaret, on Saturday, March 6.

Proceeds from the event will support the unique and essential role the Southern plays in the Twin Cities arts community. Festivities will get underway at 6:30pm, with food provided by Beyond Chocolates, wine and a silent auction. The 8pm cabaret performance-emceed by Luverne Seifert, beloved Twin Cities actor and Director of Theater Performance at the University of Minnesota-will feature performances by dancer Sally Rousse, co-founder of James Sewell Ballet; singer, pianist and composer Gabriel Kahane; and the original, delightful and ridiculous Four Humors Theater. A live auction (with original items such as the opportunity to commission a new work by Nico Muhly) and the Southern's trademark cakewalk contest will round out the evening. An after-party will begin at 10pm with DJ Greg Waletski.

The lead sponsorship for Southern Exposure 2010 has been provided by Target.

Southern Centennial:
March 2010 marks the beginning of a new century of opportunity for service by the Southern, lending Southern Exposure 2010 a special cachet.

"This is an exciting celebration," observed Gary Peterson, executive director. "The founders of 100 years ago built this theater with faith in themselves and in a rich future. We have the opportunity to renew that faith today."

Opening on March 1, 1910 as a cultural center and legitimate theater for the burgeoning Scandinavian community centered around Cedar Avenue ("Snoose Boulevard"), the Southern has had a rich and colorful past prior to re-establishing itself as a center for contemporary performing arts over the past 30 years.

The 1910-era Southern featured vaudeville shows, Saturday silent movies for the kids, and original-language Swedish plays by the likes of August Strindberg and Bjornstjerne Bjorneson. It maintained close ties with Stockholm's Södra (Southern) Teatern; an exchange program allowed actors from one Southern to perform at the other when visiting Minneapolis or Stockholm.

During the 1920s the Southern offered silent films with occasional evenings of live drama, vaudeville, and amateur variety shows. In the 1930s, with the arrival of talking pictures, it became a neighborhood movie theater; in the 1940s, it became an adults-only movie house, which ultimately went out of business.

In the late 1940s it was taken over by a contractor who used the building as a garage for heavy road equipment, leveling the floor and opening up large garage doors through the walls to accommodate his needs. (Sometime during this period the original façade was demolished as well.) It then became a warehouse and a gift shop, and in 1959, the Gaslight Restaurant opened. The Gaslight is still remembered by some as a coveted, fine dining destination (and by others as the site of marvelous pyrotechnics courtesy of the inebriated gentleman whose job it was to light the outside gaslight). The restaurant, whose legacy includes a beautiful marble bar and ticket counter, closed in the mid 1960s and the building stood vacant for about ten years.

In 1975, the Guthrie Theater leased and refurbished the space as a second performance venue with two primary components: a resident (Equity) acting company which performed mainstage shows at 8pm (one of whose members was John Peilmeier, who later went on to write "Agnes of God"), and a "Community Space Program" which enabled local performers in all disciplines to use the space for late-night productions. Notable Twin Cities performing groups such as Theatre de la Jeune Lune, Illusion Theater, and Zenon Dance Company (then "Ozone") had some of their first performances as part of this program.

The Equity Company aspect of the Guthrie 2 was disbanded after just a few months, but the Community Space Program lived on for several more years until the Guthrie terminated the lease on the building and closed its doors in 1979. A concerted community effort resulted in ownership being transferred to an independent non-profit corporation, the Southern Theater Foundation, and the space was again re-opened under its original "Southern Theater" name. The Southern has been in continuous operation since 1981 as a home for independent performing artists from the Twin Cities and beyond.

Southern Exposure tickets: $125
Sponsorships: $250 - $5000
Southern Theater box office: 612.340.1725
1420 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55454
www.southerntheater.org