Spotlight: Maria Asp

Interviewed by Cyn Collins

Residence: Seward Neighborhood

Occupation: Actor, Frank Theater, teaching artist for the Children’s Theatre Company, Captain of the Neighborhood Bridges program, a critical literacy program for inner city kids.

Organizations/Affiliations: First Unitarian Church and House of Mercy Church. Sings and plays autoharp and comb with the Baptism River Ramblers Also involved in her children’s Montessori school.
I’m a participant in the recently formed “Mother Project.” Darcy Engen, professor of theater at Augsburg, organized a group of women writers who’ll write plays, who didn’t feel our experiences of motherhood and parenting were well represented.

SSP: How long have you been with Frank Theatre? And what do you like about it?

MA: About 12 years. There’s a lot of room for ownership by the actors in the organization. I’ve been newly elected as president of FARTT ... that’s Frank Artists Resource and Think Tank!

I like the way Wendy conducts the company. There’s room for a shared constructing of meaning together. We’re risk-takers, and there are, intellectually, very interesting characters.

I can’t remove my politics or ethics from the aesthetic of Frank’s. There’s a critique and deep questioning of the script. The scripts give a huge challenge to you as an artist. There’s a challenge in the social issues we cover—we stretch ourselves. Wendy picks texts that aren’t easy; they’re challenging our perception of the world through the text. When issues are raised through the text we work through them. When I’m done with a production, I feel like I’ve finished a college course.

There’s a great hunger to examine the text and create meaning together. There’s tons of group consciousness-raising, and room to be involved in all aspects of the production. Working together for so long, we dig deeper and deeper and find meaning. My colleagues aren’t afraid of big thinking and big risk-taking and big visions with a tiny purse.
The way Wendy constructs her plays ... she thinks about people in the community and how to stretch them. She’s not afraid of not knowing outcome.

SSP: What’s been your biggest challenge at Frank?
MA: “Venus Hottentrot.” I played a trilogy of scumbags ... There were cold, calculating and physically abusive characters. I was her mother, showman and grade school chum, all related characters, but different. Every show is challenging. But this was the most.

SSP: How’s Frank Theatre changed you?
MA: It’s the saying, “what’s up with that?” There’s a lot of table work we do. Frank has drilled into me the importance of the text itself. It’s better to say, “What the?!” I have no clue. You have to come willing to work hard and be OK with not knowing everything, and be open to experimenting and able to be lost.

SSP: Tell me about the new play “Mother Courage” ...
MA: We’ve read it once. It opens October 20 and goes until November 12. We don’t have the site located yet, but soon. Go to http://www.franktheatre.org/ to find out about that. That’s the game with Frank—“Where are they performing next?” We’ve been in an ammo factory, the Sears building, and the Pillsbury A-Mill. There we had to pull dead rats out of a toilet.
One idea Wendy had was to have Mother Courage in a building under a freeway. My 8-year-old son Odin said, “How are people going to find it?” Wendy listened to the 8-year-old.

SSP: What’s been your favorite place to perform?
MA: For “The Resistible Rise Of Arturo Ui,” we performed in an ammo building. There was a manhole, I spent an afternoon chiseling the guzz out of it—I sneaked down there. There was a water boiler that looked like it could explode any minute. I entered into the gangster clubhouse through the manhole pulling a guy by his ear.

The Sears Building was really cool. Literally! We passed out little Northwest Airline blankets we found there, to the audience. Maybe it’s the spaces that aren’t like theaters that do it. CHALLENGES. All caps and bold. If you’re in a “theater” theater you view it differently. Factories, raw spaces ...
“The Exonerated,” a reading about death row, is a benefit for Oasis Crisis Intervention Center & Kulture Klub Collaborative, one night only, September 9 at the First Unitarian Society, 900 Mount Curve.

SSP: Tell me more about what you do in FARTT.
MA: We talk about what are our goals—“What do we want to do?” We provide support on all levels. We offer texts to Wendy. We’ll read and discuss what the texts mean. We provide support during production, helping create. Wendy is the only staff, plus one-half time staff. We try to make sure Wendy isn’t the only one left picking up after people. Our role is to serve by doing the unglamorous things—painting, mopping the floor, and cleanup of bathrooms.

SSP: What is your fave book recently?
MA: “The Book of Illusions,” by Paul Auster. They way he wrote it is really interesting to me. I read “Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion,” by Jack Zipes for work, but it’s really inspiring. Its kind of academic but I really like it.

SSP: What do you like about your work at the CTC?
MA: Many of the Neighborhood Bridges teachers are also Frank Theatre performers. We’re pretty darn good collaborators, and we work together well. I like the Critical Literacy program because we’re trying to provoke kids to become autonomous thinkers, to think for themselves. Theater and storytelling are the vehicles to do this. They empower children to become animators of their own lives. The kids write plays, read and improvise and perform them on the CTC stage. I was part of the start of that program that was developed by Jack Zipes and CTC Director Peter Brosius.

SSP: What inspires you the most about the Neighborhood Bridges program?
MA: The kids. They’re incredible and the teachers are amazing. It’s so hard to be a teacher in public schools these days. We live in an era of scripted teaching and functional learning. And their willingness to open the door to this chaotic program is amazing. The kids lead what they’re learning. You’re always in this gigantic learning curve.

Theater is a powerful format. To get to do it with Frank and the Neighborhood Bridges programs ... it’s exhausting but in a good way! I left Minneapolis for a work-related thing and thought, “Wow, we’re lucky to have this community.” It’s such an engaged, invested one. They’re not concerned about being safe, or afraid of getting dirty.

SSP: How has it changed you?
MA: It’s an exciting thing to have your world and self-perception shift. Reality isn’t fixed. It’s a process of discovering meaning. Both groups of colleagues are comfortable with the complexity and grayness of that statement.

SSP: How long have you lived in Seward and what do you like about living in Seward?
MA: It’s a great neighborhood to have a bike! I love riding my bike on the Greenway. I love living by the river. And, we have super yummy independent restaurants. Good food, good people and living by the river ... I mean, c’mon!

SSP: What are your hopes?
MA: We’ve got to find a way to deal with our conflicts with nonviolent solutions. From a punch to a gun to a bomb. We have to find ways to be comfortable with disagreement. We have to embrace different ways of thinking. We’ve been doing violence for a long time. Now, we’ve got to try something else, move beyond that. Try harder.
Also, globalism scares me.

SSP: What would you recommend as a solution?
MA: Be in your neighborhood. Shop, eat and play there, find ways to be in your community. Support your businesses and schools and the people in your neighborhood. You have to trust in your world. You’ve gotta show up! Be involved. Its within relationship with each other that we’re gonna grow. We’ll make each other mad; we’ll make each other laugh. Be more involved with each other. Be a part of a variety of ways of extending yourself.

I and Sarah, Cam’s wife, were in the park with our kids and a guy asked us to watch three of his kids while he took one to the bathroom. We said “sure,” and asked each other, “Would you do that, leave your kids with someone you don’t know?” We both said, “No.” He came back with a big smile and thanked us. He didn’t act apologetic for needing help, just like that was normal. I think he was from a different country. I want to live in that world, where we aren’t scared of others, where it’s OK to need and ask for help.

For more information on Frank Theatre and upcoming productions, “The Exonerated,” call 952-893-2383. For more info. about Frank Theatre’s “Mother Courage,” go to: www.franktheatre.org