Fresh Ink 2024

About the plays and artists…

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Gay Man is the first work in Patrick Scully’s autobiographical series Somewhere Along the Rainbow. Mixing together stories of his personal life, his life as an artist and activist, and progress and setbacks in the world of LGBTQ rights. This first installment begins in Scully’s high school in the 60’s and takes us on a journey through his school and college years, into his early professional life in the arts. The first segment ends in 1980, having traversed the ups and downs of Scully’s coming out story, the victories and defeats of Minneapolis and St Paul passing laws protecting Lesbian, Gay and Trans rights, and Harvey Milk’s legacy in San Francisco. If your own life intersects with this time period, your memories of this time will be reawakened. If this was all before your time, it promises an engaging history lesson that no school has yet taught.

Patrick Scully has been associated with ILLUSION THEATER since nearly the beginning when Patrick choreographed the original production of Orlando, Orlando in 1977. ILLUSION has produced Patrick’s Queer Thinking, Forever Hold Your Piece, Leaves of Grass – Illuminated (began as a large-scale work for two actors and 18 male dancers), and The 3rd Act.

Scully is well known for work ranging from large scale group works, to solo work. His largest works include: a Ballet for Boats, for forty to fifty boats, done to great critical acclaim in both Minneapolis (2015) and Potsdam, Germany (2010); His solo works, more intimate and often biographical, and highly acclaimed, have included works ranging from Too Soon Lost (1990) to Thrive! (2010). 

Scully began dancing in 1972 as a college freshman. In 1976 he co-founded Contactworks, a Minneapolis based dance collective focused on contact improvisation. In 1980 he left Contactworks to explore broader horizons. That led him to dance with Remy Charlip, beginning with Remy’s Ten Men show in the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival in 1984. Dancing for Remy Charlip, Scully toured to Boston, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, New York, Berkeley CA. Eventually he returned to Minneapolis focusing on the creation of his own work.

Performing his own work, Scully has toured internationally and nationally, as well as across all of Minnesota. In addition to his performing work, Patrick was the founder and longtime director of Patrick’s Cabaret, in Minneapolis. More complete information is available at http://www.patrickscully.org

Playwright Carlyle Brown and director Noel Raymond have been collaborating in their respective roles for nearly thirty years. Now, they are exploring working together as co-creators of a theatrical work in which they will both perform. “Something new is about to begin.”

Louise Smith directs, she returns to ILLUSION where she was part of several shared works that Ping Chong’s Company and ILLUSION created in the 1980’s including Angels of Swedenborg, Nosferatu, and Snow.  

Noel Raymond is the Co-Artistic Director of Pillsbury House + Theatre where she has helped lead, develop, and implement theatre and arts programming to promote community vitality since 1995. As an actor she has performed with Pillsbury House Theatre, the Burning House Group, the Guthrie Theater, Penumbra Theatre, Bryant Lake Bowl, and Minnesota Festival Theatres. Her directing credits include works at Pillsbury House Theatre, Theatre Mu, and the Playwrights’ Center.

Carlyle Brown is the Andrew W. Mellon Playwright in Residence at ILLUSION. His shows produced at ILLUSION include Finding Fish, Acting Black, A Play by Barb and Carl, and History of Religion, and curator for the Afro-Atlantic Festival of Playwrights. He was honored for Distinguished Achievement in American Theater by the William Inge Theater Festival. Also, in 2022 he received the Legacy Award from the Legacy Playwrights Initiative of the Dramatist’s Guild. The award recognizes established American playwrights for their sustained influence on the American theatre. Carlyle is a Core Writer at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis and an alum of New Dramatists.

Little known fact: the Marx brother who starred in Animal Crackers, Duck Soup, A Night at the Opera, and You Bet Your Life was pen pals with the author of The Waste Land, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Cocktail Party, and Murder in the Cathedral. Groucho and Eliot met once in 1964 over dinner in London. Say the secret word and be a Rufus T. Firefly on the wall as they discuss poetry, vaudeville, war, wives, Gilbert and Sullivan, Shakespeare and Freud’s Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious.

Jeffrey Hatcher is returning to ILLUSION to create Groucho Marx Meets T. S. Eliot. Since the Three Viewings in 1994, ILLUSION has commissioned/produced nine Hatcher plays including No Strings with Stephanie Lusco (1996), his adaptation of Henry James’s Turn of the Screw (1998), Good N’ Plenty (2001), Mercy of a Storm (2003), Murderers (2005), Mrs. Mannerly (2008), What’s the Word For (2012), Jeffrey Hatcher’s Hamlet (2014) which ILLUSION Board’s commissioned for ILLUSION’s 40th anniversary, A Night in Olympus with Chan Poling (2016), and Netherlands (2019).

Michael Robins, ILLUSION’s Executive Producing Director will direct both Patrick Scully’s new work and Jeffrey Hatcher’s new play. Most recently Michael directed T Mychael Rambo's PRESENT, the premiere of Michael Egan's stage adaptation Five Minutes of Heaven, and In This Moment…Now.

Jim Cunningham (Groucho Marx) has been a Twin Cities actor (both on and off camera), Master of Ceremonies and Host for 35 years. He has spent the past 17 years bringing It’s A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play to the stage at the beautiful Saint Paul Hotel. Most recently he created the role of “Frank” in the World Premiere of Patrick Coyle’s play The Big Blue River. For The ILLUSION THEATER he appeared as “Joseph Goebbels” in the World Premiere of Dancing With Giants, “Groucho” in The Marx Brothers: The Cocoanuts, and “Bill W” in Bill W & Doctor Bob. Jim is excited to be appearing as “Groucho” in a new Jeffrey Hatcher Play as part of ILLUSION THEATER’s Fresh Ink Series. He was one of the “3 Guys in Tights” in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare...Abridged and is The Feast Master for both The Feast of Fantasy and The Phantom’s Feast at The Minnesota Renaissance Festival. Jim was also “Tony” in Tony & Tina‘s Wedding and spent three years doing Improv as part of The Resident Company at Dudley Riggs’ Brave New Workshop. He was The Minister of Fun & Game Host for both The Minnesota Twins and Minnesota Wild for more than 20 years. Jim is a native of Saint Paul and still proudly calls Saint Paul home.

John Middleton (T.S. Eliot) has performed with companies throughout the Twin Cities including Theater Latté Da, the Jungle Theater, Frank Theater, Gremlin, Six Points, Torch, Girl Friday Productions, Sandbox Theater, Carlyle Brown and Company, Theatre Pro Rata, and Park Square. As a writer, his plays have been performed at Lyric Arts Main Street Stage, the Paul Bunyan Playhouse, Thirst, the Minnesota Fringe Festival, and Torch Theater.

ILLUSION has provided a home for Transatlantic Love Affair to present their new works since 2012 when ILLUSION presented an expanded version of The Ballad of the Pale Fisherman. Transatlantic Love Affair imagines the journey of Red Riding Hood's mother after her daughter disappears into the wilderness, and explores themes of grief, domesticity, and wildness. Inspired by the same well-known folktale as TLA's 2013 production of Red Resurrected, this dreamlike, fantastical narrative invites us to imagine what lies beyond the comfort of what we know - to allow ourselves to be swallowed by the wolf and see what we find. Featuring Allison Vincent, Isabel Nelson, Derek Miller, and additional ensemble members TBA.