The Back Track to Art

The Guthrie theater is offering free tickets to actors for the December 19-20 performances of Sweet William.

A large-spirited salute to the Bard, Sweet William is part biography, part analysis and part performance. Reflecting on his long international experience as a director and leading actor, and having spend some 20,000+ hours onstage performing Shakespeare, Michael Pennington sets out to celebrate the life and work of the theater icon.

A seasoned actor/director, Pennington’s career has spanned more than 40 years, during which time he has played leading roles for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and his own award-winning English Shakespeare Company, which he co-founded with Michael Bogdanov in 1986. Perhaps best known to younger audiences as Moff Jerjerrod, commander of the Death Star in Star Wars – Return of the Jedi, he has also published three “User’s Guides” to individual Shakespeare plays, and delivered the annual Shakespeare lecture at the prestigious British Academy.

If you are an actor, and you are interested in these tickets, please contact me at michael(at)northfieldartsguild(dot)org.

Thanks to all who helped with and participated in the Northfield Arts Guild’s ninth annual Festival of Trees. With your help we raised about $5000 at the event. This income will contribute to the quality artistic experiences we provide for the community of Northfield. Below are a handful of photos taken by “citizen journalist” extraordinaire Griff Wigley (you can see more here).

For those of you who missed this year’s event, you should be aware you missed out on a lot of great holiday cheer, food, wine, song, hand-crafted ornaments, and much more! You also missed out on some fantastic holiday steals. Just to name a few, two opera tickets (value $170) sold for just $50; a $100 gift certificate for dance classes sold for $25; two tickets to a Minnesota Orchestra concert (value $136) sold for just $30; and a three-month membership at the Olympus Health Club (value $300) sold for just $80.

If I were you, I’d mark my calendar now for next year’s event, lest you miss out on another chance to commit (legitimately, courtesy of your Northfield Arts Guild) grand holiday larceny!

In the meantime, if you’re still looking for a bargain, I have ONE free movie pass for a December 13 preview screening at the Landmark Lagoon Cinema in Minneapolis of the new movie by Guillermo Del Toro, The Orphanage. You can’t get much cheaper than free!

The first person to contact me at michael(at)northfieldartsguild(dot)org gets the tix.