Photo cutline: Frederick (Mark Swaggert), Ruth (Emily Lehmann), Pirate King (John McCallum)

A venerable Century College English professor, who is a man, playing the indomitable Queen Victoria? Pirates who won’t attack orphans?

A handsome young apprentice with a leap-year birthday discovering that he is “legally” five years old and still bound to his apprentice contract? It’s all part of the fun when Century performs one of the most beloved and silliest musicals ever written, “The Pirates of Penzance” by Gilbert and Sullivan.

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Sample Night Live will present its next monthly show Wednesday, April 4, 2012 at History Theatre in downtown St. Paul.

Since its inception in 2008, Sample Night Live has connected more than 400 Artist and Arts Organizations with more than 6,000 new fans. A dozen arts organizations will offer ten-minute samples of upcoming and ongoing works.

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Ka Zoua Xiong

White Bear Lake, Minn. (March 9, 2012) — Ka Zoua Xiong, a student in the Century College Translation and Interpreting Program, recently won high praise from the Hmong community by translating into Hmong a hilarious new play about culture conflict.

The well-attended play, “Confessions of a Lazy Hmong Woman” by May Lee-Yang, was performed at the beautiful theater in the Paul Wellstone Center on St. Paul’s West Side over two weekends in February. Over 1,400 people saw the play, which is about a Hmong-American woman who is struggling with her feminist views of the so-called “good Hmong daughter.”

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Mu Performing Arts continues its 2011-2012 season with the new play Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them by A. Rey Pamatmat and directed by Randy Reyes. The show runs March 16 – April 1 at Mixed Blood Theatre.

Three kids — Kenny (Alex Galick), his sister Edith (Isabella Dawis), and their friend Benji (Matthew Cerar) — are all but abandoned on a farm in remote Middle America. With little adult supervision, they feed and care for each other, making up the rules as they go. But when Kenny’s relationship with Benji becomes more than friendship, and Edith shoots something she really shouldn’t shoot, the formerly indifferent outside world comes barging in whether they want it to or not.

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St. Paul, Minn. (February 13, 2012) – Playwright and performance artist, Katie Ka Vang’s recent diagnosis of Stage 4 Anaplastic Large T-Cell Lymphoma has the Twin Cities community coming together. Six fundraisers in Vang’s name are actively being planned spanning from January to April with many more in the works.

Vang, 32, Director of Navigate: Artist Services at the Center for Hmong Arts and Talent (CHAT) was diagnosed on January 3 at the University of Minnesota Fairview Medical Center. Immediately, friends and family worked collectively to create fundraisers and benefits in order to offset Vang’s medical and living expenses. Vang’s first visit to the hospital was in December 2011 when she did not have medical insurance. Due to the cancer, Vang is now on medical leave for the next two to four months. Currently, her medical bill is over $70,000.

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"Stop Kiss" Official Publicity Photo. Tamara Clark '12 (left) and Lisa Hu '15.

St. Paul, Minn.—The Macalester College Theatre and Dance Department presents Stop Kiss, by Diana Son, in the Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center, Main Stage Theater, 1600 Grand Ave., St. Paul, Minn. Tickets are $7 general admission and $5 for seniors and groups. Performances are at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday Feb. 17 and 18, and Thursday, Friday, and Saturday Feb. 23–25 and at 2:00 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 19. There will be a talk back following the Sunday matinee performance.Stop Kiss is directed by Cheryl Moore Brinkley, Visiting Instructor in the Theatre & Dance Department. For ticket information, call 651-696-6359.

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Century College will hold auditions for its spring musical “The Pirates of Penzance” on Feb. 6, 7 and 8. Community members are encouraged to audition. Performances will be April 13 to 29 on the weekends.

The Feb. 6 and 7 auditions will be between 6 and 9 p.m., and Feb. 8 will be from 6 to 8 p.m. They will be held in the West Campus Theatre.

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Ane Sawyer-Aitch at work

By Saymoukda Vongsay
AAP staff wrier 

I met Anne not too long ago during a rehearsal for the play, Confessions of a Lazy Hmong Woman (written/directed/produced by May Lee-Yang), of which we are currently involved with – Anne as the puppeteer-at-large and me as a live-dubb performer (the play will be performed completely in the Hmong language).

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May Lee-Yang

By SAYMOUKDA VONGSAY
AAP staff writer

Hmong American, May Lee-Yang, has been a household name in the Minnesotan arts community for over a decade, known as a playwright, poet, prose writer, and performance artist.

Lee-Yang was born in Ban Vinai, a refugee camp in Thailand following the Secret War in Laos. Nine months after her birth, her family resettled in St. Paul, Minnesota where she lives to this day. Her work often explores the lives of Hmong women and living in a bicultural world.

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Celebrate Chinese New Year with a nasty dragon! (Southern Theater photo)

By Mary Tan
AAP Staff Writer

MINNEAPOLIS — It’s the year of the dragon, so what better way to showcase Chinese culture by taking your family to Tiger Lion Arts’ premier performance of The Dragons are Singing Tonight.

The performance is based on a series of poems about dragons written by United States Children’s Poet Laureate Jack Prelutsky.  Composer Laurie MacGregor turned the poems into 16 songs, which feature a unique storyline about an ordinary boy, a magical girl and a very nasty dragon.

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