1989
Kevin Kling stars in his play Lloyd’s Prayer about a boy raised by raccoons with Michael Sommers playing Lloyd and directed by Steven Dietz. Later in 2002, ILLUSION reprises the play with Brian Goranson directing, Nathan Christopher playing the Raccoon Boy, and Angie Haigh as the Angel and Zach Curtis as Lloyd. The critics call Lloyd’s Prayer, “a fanciful comedy about the outsider in our society.”
Michael Robins and Gary Rue create a musical revue Men Sing. This is the beginning of ILLUSION’s interest in musical revues. Men Sing features Peter Rothstein, Joe Wilson, and Dennis Spears. The Star Tribune writes, "the songs are bright, humorous, balanced looks at the many sides of the male equation."
1988
The playwright Jon Klein and ILLUSION receive a Rockefeller grant for a commission to write a play about the South. Southern Cross intertwines six stories about the South including General Sherman, Runaway Slaves, Huey Long, Martin Luther King, and Elvis Presley. In the Company are Walton Stanley, Marysue Moses, Faye Price, and James A. Williams. “The play attacks a huge amorphous subject with sensitivity, humor and respect. It emerges as a challenging imaginative treatment of very difficult material.” —Star Tribune. The Bush Foundation and the Jerome Foundation help to support this commission.
At the early part of the AIDS epidemic. Ryan White was one of the first children to be diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. He was a hemophiliac. There was not much known about AIDS. His community drove him out of his middle school and eventually out of the state. Members of our Twin Cities community asked ILLUSION to develop a theater piece for high school students to dispel myths about HIV/AIDS. “If you can talk about sexual abuse to high school students, can you talk about sex and death? Can you talk about HIV/AIDS in Minnesota.?"
The Bush Foundation, Blandin Foundation, and Sheltering Arms Foundation support the Amazing Grace work. The play is a portrait of a community that confronts its own ignorance when one of the high school football players has AIDS. The play also includes filmed interviews with Company Member Drew Tillotson and his partner Archie Harrison who is HIV positive. The play has filmed segments of Drew and Archie talking about the challenges of the disease and how they as a couple face those challenges. At the same time ILLUSION was creating Amazing Grace, Archie and Drew were being interviewed by National Public Radio. Click here to hear the archive recordings of Drew and Archie National Public Radio series of interviews with Patti Neighmond on “All Things Considered.” She interviews them over the course of Archie’s illness to chronicle what life is like living with HIV/AIDS.
Amazing Grace tours throughout Minnesota. It plays in Cambridge, Gaylord, Elmore, North Branch, Red Wing, Duluth, Bemidji, Redwood Falls, Appleton, Thief River Falls, Ely, Brainerd, Marshall, Grand Rapids, and Cass Lake among others. At some locations there is fear and resistance to ILLUSION's performance. At one community there was a prayer circle held at the same time as the performance. In Shakopee, over 400 people attend the performance. The Company is confronted, “Tell us who in your company is gay?” A minister who led a post play discussion is told that she is "godless" and that she will “go to hell” because of her advocacy of the play. Another audience member announces to the audience that “The play isn’t about building HIV/AIDS, awareness, it is about recruiting homosexuals.” Another audience members tells us “It is my purpose to bring down the ILLUSION THEATER because of this play.”
In Mora, Minnesota, the presentation of the play triggers a movement to suspend sex and HIV education in the public schools, even though current Minnesota law requires HIV/AIDS instruction.
The Pastor of the Assembly of God church in Mora, Pastor Squire speaks out against the play. He reads a statement, “Parts of the play seem to endorse homosexuality as an acceptable, alternate lifestyle. We believe it is an aberrant lifestyle and a perversion of natural desires.”
He begins to go on Twin Cities radio and television talk shows protesting ILLUSION's production. Later he said, “Am I to stop condemning sin as sin? I would have been remiss if I hadn’t spoken out, I could just as well have spoken about gossip, lying, cheating, adultery, drunkenness or drug abuse.”
His campaign against ILLUSION’s play leads to demonstrations outside Pastor Squires’ church in Mora when the church lets out its Sunday services. “Hey Ho Homophobia, has got to go.” Signs are held as well as “I'm gay and I come from a small town.” The AIDS activist group ACT UP participates, Dykes on Bikes arrive adding their voice. The protests continue throughout the summer. Right before school is to start, a Mora community panel votes to re- install sex education in the Mora School District.
On the other hand, in Appleton, Minnesota the pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church wrote to the ILLUSION THEATER, “All students in our health classes wrote a one-page reaction paper of the performance. Overwhelmingly the students enjoyed the performance, they appreciated the factual, forthright, straight-talking production. They liked the characters, the humor, the students also appreciated speaking with the actors after the performance. Teachers had used the Illusion Theater’s excellent curriculum guide and that helped prepare the students for the production."
Amazing Grace plays to high schools, community centers in over 150 sites across the country. Bonnie Morris is quoted in an article in the Star Tribune describing the title “the way a community deals with AIDS can be with grace, and that can be amazing.”
One of the filmed segments in the play is a frank discussion between Archie and high school students whom Illusion has come to know as they teach in the schools. Archie tells the students they can ask him “anything they want.” Many myths and misperceptions about HIV/AIDS are dispelled. Several students at this event decide this conversation should not be limited to only students who came to Illusion to meet Archie and Drew.
Two students petition the Superintendent of the Minneapolis School District to allow Archie Harrison to come to a Social Studies class at South High. At the time the Minneapolis District has a policy of prohibiting anyone from entering a District school building. who identifies himself / herself /their self as gay. The superintendent, Robert Ferrara, gives permission to Archie Harrison to come to South High to share his story.
Over 100 students cram into the classroom to hear Archie speak. He answers every and any question the students ask. “When did you know when you were gay?” “Did you ever date girls?” “What do you think will happen when you die.?” The secrecy and fear about HIV-AIDs fell away in that room in that school. building that morning.
1987
ILLUSION’s Board under the leadership of President Karla Ekdahl creates a signature fund-raising event, The Crystal Ball, which takes over the IDS Crystal Court for the first time and sets a trend for non-profit fund-raisers. ILLUSION continues this theatrical event for five years. The Saturday afternoon of the 1987 World Series, Twins’ Kirby Puckett hit a dramatic home run tied the Series at three games apiece sending the Twins into the final 7th game. That Saturday night all of Twin Cities was celebrating and ILLUSION’s Crystal Ball was the place to be.
ILLUSION’s Board brings back The Crystal Ball as a Halloween event under the leadership of event maestro Scott Mayer and holds it first at the new Hotel Meridian (2004), and then at The Soap Factory (2005).
1986
ILLUSION develops a series of news and public affairs programs with WCCO Television, the local CBS affiliate, called Project Abuse which includes two weeks of programming on the nightly news to highlight the issues of child sexual abuse and Minnesota’s efforts at prevention. Included is a statewide broadcast of Touch made available to all school districts followed by a half hour facilitated discussion with a class of 3rd grade students in a Minneapolis classroom. This discussion is led by Minneapolis teacher Kathy Anlauf to demonstrate how to respond to elementary students about the sensitive issues of sexual abuse.
Don Shelby leads a live Town Hall Forum about the issues. ILLUSION and WCCO win a Community Programming Regional Emmy for Project Abuse.
Target Inc., a division of the Dayton Hudson Corporation asks ILLUSION to develop a play similar to Touch “to celebrate the spirit of family.” Target plans to present “Project Family” as they move into new markets (Nebraska and Missouri). ILLUSION creates Family, a musical that celebrates all the new ways family is being defined. It is first performed at the Walker. Family tours from 1986 through 1995, first to sites that Target selects and then to other organizations and communities that request it.
