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This week: a bass-player from Beirut, Tony Kushner's "The Illusion" and a new play about an early Winona family staged in their 1856 home. 

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Brooke Nelson is a big Tony Kushner fan, so she had to check out Theatre Pro Rata's production of 

 at Park Square in St. Paul. The play centers around a father who wants to know what happened to his estranged son, and employs a sorcerer to find out. Nelson was delighted by the poetic language, the staging and the ending which totally caught her by surprise. Performances run through Sunday.


Kathleen Peterson says Winona has a lot to offer in the summer, but this year it's adding something new to the mix. The Winona County Historical Society is reopening the Bunnell House, and it's the setting of 

Theatre du Mississippi's "The Hired Girl Gets Married."

 Written by local playwright Lynn Nankivil about the Bunnell family, the show's characters and events are all taken from history. Think of it as the Downton Abbey of the Minnesota frontier. Performances are on Saturdays and Sundays between June 27 and August 2.

As an arts writer Pamela Espeland sees a lot of concerts, and she says one of the finest she's ever witnessed was by bassist 

, accompanied by his son Sylvain on piano. Rabbath taught himself to play the bass as a teenager growing up in Beirut. He invented his own fingerings, and uses the bow like a violinist. She says he plays the bass with so much feeling that it pours out of the instrument and into the room. The Rabbaths perform on Tuesday, June 30 in the Benson Great Hall at Bethel University.

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This week: a bass-player from Beirut, Tony Kushner's "The Illusion" and a new play about an early Winona family staged in their 1856 home.

Art Hounds: Winona history and a bass player from Beirut

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