SCARECROW ON FIRE!

Show Run Time: 2 Hours

Intermission: 15 Minutes

By Kevin Kling

Produced by Illusion Theatre (Minneapolis)

August 12-15 at 7:30pm

Matinee Performance Thursday August 14 at 1:30pm

In this year of Wicked, the prequel to the Wizard of Oz, storyteller extraordinaire Kevin Kling has penned a laugh-filled and irreverent sequel, entitled SCARECROW ON FIRE! The three Oz amigos, bored in their Oz comfort, respond to a psychological cry from their old pal, Dorothy. Using the ruby slippers she left behind, the boys make the reverse trip to Kansas. The Tin Man, an art-loving mechanical man is enamored of Kansas’ fellow machines. The brave Lion is baffled by the fear his beautiful baritone “roar” seems to elicit. And the Scarecrow again proves that actual brains are highly overrated, at least in Kansas. Their search leads to a desperate Dorothy caught in another kind of whirlwind and a Wizard that uses his prodigious skills of persuasion as a radio DJ on WOOZ. 
Performed by a stellar cast, accompanied by the iconic music of the era, and enhanced by cinematic scenes from the silent 1925 Wizard of Oz with nods to the 1939 version we all know and love, SCARECROW ON FIRE! Is both breathtaking and heartwarming. 

Kevin Kling*

Playwright, Scarecrow

Playwright, author and storyteller Kevin Kling is a proud graduate of Osseo High School and Gustavus Adolphus College. His plays have been produced in local and regional theaters including, Illusion Theater, Mixed Blood, Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts, and off Broadway at Westside Arts and Second Stage Theater.
Awards include the Whiting Award, NEA, McKnight, Bush Fellowship, Jerome Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board and two regional Emmy Awards for PBS documentaries Kevin Kling: Lost & Found and Art + Medicine: Disability, Culture and Creativity. Kevin is a frequent performer at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN. He appears often on TPT’s Almanac and was named the Minneapolis Storyteller Laureate by Mayor RT Rybak in 2014 *member Actors’ Equity Association

Bradley Greenwald

Lion, Dry Goods Man, Guy, Man, Wizard, Doctor, Lab Tech

Bradley Greenwald is a singer, actor, writer and director. For over thirty years he has performed with almost every theater, dance company and music ensemble in the Twin Cities. He adapted Madeleine L’Engle’s novel “A Wrinkle in Time” into a libretto for Libby Larsen’s opera; wrote the book and lyrics for “C”. (adaptation of “Cyrano de Bergerac”), and “Johnny Skeeky”, or “The Remedy for Everything”, (adaptation of the Puccini comedy, with Steven Epp), both produced by Theater Latté Da. Bradley has curated and written narratives for innovative spoken word/music concerts for Open Eye Theater, Schubert Club Mix, Music Saint Croix, St. Cloud Symphony, Oratorio Society of Minnesota and Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh. He is the recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship in music, the McKnight Fellowship for Theater Artists, and the Ivey Award. Bradley is Co-coordinator of MacPhail's Prelude: Singer-Actor Lab for high school students. He is a member of Actors’ Equity Association.

Show Sponsor

Dan Chouinard

Tin Man, Newspaper Man, Toto, Nurse

Dan Chouinard is a St. Paul-based all-purpose pianist and accordionist, sing-along enabler, concert soloist and accompanist, French and Italian teacher and bicycling vagabond.  He's the go-to pianist for a smorgasbord of singers across the Twin Cities and has been writer and host of live history-and-music shows for Minnesota Public Radio and Twin Cities Public Television. He played on a dozen live broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion and has toured with Garrison Keillor and Prudence Johnson over the past three years. Recent favorites include gigs with his classic country band, Lush Country; summertime appearances with various folks at ILLUSION’s LIVE at Lyndale Gardens series; and a new music and history show, Rondo ’56: Remembering St. Paul’s Black Main Street. He started working regularly with Kevin Kling and Simone Perrin in 2008.

Simone Perrin

Dorothy

Simone Perrin grew up on the banks of the upper Mississippi in beautiful Winona, MN. After school and a brief go at New York City, Simone found her way back to Minnesota, where she met and started working with Kevin Kling. A decade ago, Simone moved to rural Wisconsin, where she lives today with her family.  She has appeared on the Prairie Home Companion and has performed with many regional theaters including The Guthrie, Theater Latte Da, Open Eye Figure Theatre, The Cincinnati Playhouse, and The Seattle Repertory Theater, where she and Kevin developed two original plays, How? How? Why? Why? Why? And Breakin’ Hearts and Takin’ Names. In 2009, Simone released her first album Hummingbird, available to listen on most streaming platforms.

Michelle Kinney

Cellist

Cellist and composer Michelle Kinney is most inspired when working in improvisational cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary contexts. Recent collaborative creations for dance include Laurie Van Wieren, Ananya Dance Theater, Black Label Movement, BRKFST; and for theater, Kevin Kling, Michael Sommers, Theater Latté Da, and Marya Hart’s Fidgety Fairy Tales. Michelle also performs her original music with many bands (currently Crime Family and the Tamarack Stylites) and is a regular contributor to some of the Twin Cities’ most interesting music projects led by genre-pushing artists such as Purple Orange, Zeitgeist, Mary Ellen Childs, Chastity Brown, Douglas Ewart, Aby Wolf, Nirmala Rajasekar and Dylan Hicks. Michelle has been recognized for her work by The McKnight Foundation (Composer Fellowship), Two Metropolitan Regional Arts Council Next Step Fund grants, The Bush Foundation (Bush Artists Fellowship), The Jerome Foundation, MN State Arts Board (with Jelloslave), NEA/Rockefeller, Harvestworks/Studio Pass, and American Composers Forum.