“That’s Our New Theater”

Sometimes art begets art. On his drive home from a poetry festival in Marshall, Minnesota, in the spring of 1998, Ken Flies imagined the basic idea for the Rural America Arts Partnership. He had heard enough that week of abandoned barns and falling silos, and he knew there was a strong rural culture alive in and around Plainview, Minnesota. He and his wife, Millie, had recently decided to relocate to their homeland area of Plainview for Millie to follow her passion to open a restaurant and Ken to spend time at his hobby of writing. Maybe it was Ken’s love of writing and his high school acquaintance with author, Jon Hassler. Maybe it was his background as a marketing and planning executive with several start-up companies, or possibly his work with the Peace Corps and community development, or simply his powerful imagination, but Flies knew it could be done. Ken then proceeded to use his skills to write a mission statement and business plan for the concept of the Rural Arts Partnership. He and his wife, Millie, then proceeded to pull together a small group including Dean and Sally Harrington, as well as Sally Childs, artistic director for the Lyric Theater. It didn’t take them long to start envisioning, in detail, the multi-program rural arts partnership Ken had conceived.

The Harringtons, who have long dreamed of a theater in Plainview, converted their interest and enthusiasm for such a venture to the project, and Dean applied his financial know-how as a banker. Dean Harrington was aware that a project like this would not attract Minnesota arts funding until it had some sort of track record, and early productions were scrapped together. Meanwhile local donors became interested enough to help with the down payment on a building. The Partnership began pilot productions and began carefully tracking where interest and audiences came from, seeing that Rochester was a good market, and in summers the Twin Cities, especially for Hassler productions. It is notable that the local community folk were not far behind the metro areas, as an important audience base. “There’s art in our town.”

Sally Child’s connection had to do with the town’s re-claiming of an historical asset. Minnesota novelist, Jon Hassler grew up in Plainview, and at least one of his popular rural community stories was set there. Hassler’s book, Grand Opening, is about life centered around a local Plainview grocery store in the late 1940’s. It seemed right that the first spoke of the new arts center was to be the Jon Hassler Theater, opening for the first time in summer of 2000 appropriately featuring a play based on Grand Opening.

The Hassler Theater, “on Broadway” in Plainview, is built in a simple structure formerly housing an International Harvester dealership. It had the “right footprint” and “owners who were enthusiastic about having the building become a theater,” said Sally Childs. She also brought in Erica Zafarano, a set designer, to assess the building. The theater is now a spacious, easily accessible 225-seat production facility. This collaborative idea, the new space, and the Hassler connection, drew to Plainview the Lyric Theater company, formerly of Minneapolis and doing works by Minnesota writers such as Bill Holm and Jon Hassler since 1990. They came down and pulled together a production of Dear James before the Theater space ever opened.

People and events just started falling into place. The enthusiasm still shines in the eyes of its founders, as they share details of the birth of a theater. In addition to hard work, the effort has also had its share of good fortune. The theater has, for example, procured all of its 225 seats at no original cost. Ken Flies tracked down some theater seats at Augustana College in Sioux Falls from a theater, just before it was torn down.

Broadway in Plainview!

Adaptations of novels have proven best so far, and the Hassler Theater Company will produce works by rural Minnesota writers as well as classic works like The Fantasticks or On Golden Pond. Simon’s Night, by Jon Hassler will be run in June/July (2001) and Grand Opening will again appear just before Christmas. All on Broadway – and in Plain View!

The theater also adds excitement and practical experience to the local high school’s creative arts programming. Students work on lighting, set building, or audition for parts. And the local folk also get involved. A dairy farmer from the Rochester area does the lighting work for winter performances.

As the Theater became a reality, other segments of the Rural Arts Partnership fell into place. The Methodist Church came up for sale, and the arts partnership saw it as a potential space for a History Center. Before long it also became known that Hassler’s boyhood home (the house itself) was soon to be demolished. Not so. The Rural Arts Partnership bought it and moved it one lot away from the Theater. This will be the site of the new Writer’s Center, a center for writers’ conferences and book clubs, a small retreat facility and a program for in-resident writers. It will appeal to all ages– school-age youth to older folk.

Many of the elements of the Rural American Arts Partnership are in sync with the community’s broader vision for itself.

• A bike trail
• a re-commitment to its history
• a new organic restaurant, called Rebekkah’s
• the Tavern on the Green, with its capacity to handle large dinner groups (Ken and Millie’s successful venture)
• a commitment to rural culture….

they all make sense together. The RAAP Board and town leaders feel that the whole rural experience is what will appeal, and that parts of southeastern Minnesota are still well kept secrets.

Here is a setting within 2 hours of the Twin Cities that offers rolling countryside, lovely church steeples, proximity to the Kellogg Weaver Sand Dunes area and the beautiful Whitewater and Carley State Parks, small shops, and now the arts. “Art hooks to tourism without a major capital or bonding issue,” said Ken Flies. RAAP’s mission is just as thoughtful as its leaders are: to preserve and promote agricultural-based rural and small town American culture and values, through history and the arts. It is dedicated to promoting arts that will enrich its community.

Have there been any surprises? Possibly the buy-in of the local townsfolk. Stories abound describing early skepticism that has evolved to full-blown pride. That’s our theater, they say, and season tickets are not a thing reserved for trips north to the Metro area or south to Rochester. A few core people believed in this, and energy runs high. Theater embedded in rolling farm country is, for Plainview, just the beginning.