MN Shortlist, March 6–12: From Cuban cinema to circus spectacle
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Early March brings a mix of international cinema, historical reflection and theater that asks pointed questions about power and perspective. From Cuban film and German modernism to puppeted insects and taiko drumming, this week’s lineup moves across forms and cultures — and repeatedly returns to the question of who gets to tell the story.
17th Minnesota Cuban Film Festival at The Main Cinema in Minneapolis — Through Apr. 1
Now underway in its first week, the 17th Minnesota Cuban Film Festival brings a wide cross-section of contemporary and archival Cuban cinema to Minneapolis, while placing the films in the long political context of the U.S. blockade. Screenings at The Main Cinema range from documentaries and music films to coming-of-age dramas, often paired with post-film discussions that connect questions of language, identity and place to both local audiences and Cuba’s evolving cultural landscape.
‘Bug Ballet’ at The Southern Theater in Minneapolis — Mar. 6–14
Minneapolis puppeteer Orren Fen’s “Bug Ballet” transforms the windowsill of a recently deceased grandmother’s home into a miniature ecosystem where flies, maggots and other oversized creatures quietly take over. The production blends choreography by Arwen Wilder with a live score by Adrian Cox-Thurmond. The result is a darkly playful meditation on decay, gender identity and the uneasy future of domestic spaces once humans are gone. Creator Orren Fen says the production explores decay and gender identity through the idea of insects gradually occupying human spaces after people are gone. Performances are sold out, though a limited number of tickets may be released at the box office shortly before showtime.
‘Waking Miss Daisy’ at The O’Shaughnessy at St. Catherine University in St. Paul — Mar. 6–14
Created by the physically inventive troupe Combustible Company, “Waking Miss Daisy” revisits Alfred Uhry’s “Driving Miss Daisy,” shifting the focus toward Hoke, the Black chauffeur whose story anchored the original play and film. The production combines movement, theatrical collage and spoken text to reconsider the earlier narrative and to ask how the story changes when the perspective shifts.
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‘The Welkin’ at Gremlin Theatre in St. Paul — Mar. 6–29
Lucy Kirkwood’s “The Welkin,” set in rural England in 1759 as Halley’s comet approaches, begins with a condemned woman who claims pregnancy in an attempt to avoid execution. Twelve local women are assembled to decide whether she is telling the truth. From Frank Theatre, the debate unfolds like a courtroom drama, becoming a fierce and darkly funny examination of belief, power and the systems that determine whose voices count when justice is at stake.
‘Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945’ at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minneapolis — Mar. 7–Jul. 19
Drawn from Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, this exhibition brings roughly 70 paintings and sculptures by artists including Paul Klee, Käthe Kollwitz, Otto Dix, Gabriele Münter, Wassily Kandinsky and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner to the Minneapolis Institute of Art. “Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945” examines how artists responded to the upheavals between the fall of imperial Germany and the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust, showing how portraiture, expressionism and abstraction became ways of confronting political instability.
Ensō Daiko Performance at Landmark Center in St. Paul — Mar. 8
TaikoArts Midwest’s resident ensemble Ensō Daiko brings the athletic precision of Japanese taiko drumming to Landmark Center. The performance blends percussion and choreography into a single physical language. The St. Paul organization has spent years building regional awareness of the form through performances and education programs, and even appeared in the documentary “Finding Her Beat.”
‘Water for Elephants’ at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis — Through Mar. 8
The national tour of the Broadway musical “Water for Elephants,” based on Sara Gruen’s novel, is in its final weekend at the Orpheum Theatre. The production leans heavily on circus craft, using aerial work, acrobatics and large-scale puppetry — including a striking elephant — to shape the show’s visual world. The story follows Jacob Jankowski, a former circus worker recalling a life defined by spectacle, romance and the fragile communities that formed around traveling shows.
Taken together, the week’s events circle some familiar territory: memory, justice and the systems that quietly shape everyday life. Whether through a gallery wall, a courtroom-style drama or a windowsill full of insects, they suggest that history is rarely settled — and that the arts remain one of the clearest places to see it shifting.
