OnStage: Company town's company is theater
Courtesy Minneapolis Star-Tribune - By Graydon Royce

LANESBORO, MINN. - It's no ethanol plant or poultry processing facility, but Commonweal Theatre symbolizes economic development in Lanesboro. Next weekend the company opens Fillmore County's biggest construction project since spring 2006: a new theater.

The focus will be on art as the lights dim and Frederick Knott's thriller "Wait Until Dark" is performed. But more than simply producing one more play, Commonweal is now the biggest building and employer in town outside of the school district.

"This facility becomes the center of our community," said Eric Bunge, Commonweal's managing director. "This is a company town, and that company happens to be Commonweal."

The methodical g! rowth of Commonweal and the assorted artistic endeavors that have flourished in its wake define Lanesboro, a bucolic jewel in the heart of the Root River Valley, and they illustrate the growing value of art centers in rural communities.

Bunge grew up in nearby Preston -- which does have an ethanol plant -- and founded Commonweal in 1989 at the behest of the Lanesboro Arts Council. At the time, the town was several years into a renaissance spawned primarily by its location on the Root River bike trail and a sprinkling of B & Bs that catered to sightseers in the bluff country of southeastern Minnesota.

"At first, I think the theater was seen as a curiosity," said Julia Borgen, who grew up on a farm outside Lanesboro and is retired after 25 years as a school secretary. There were people who feared the artists would take over the town, she said, and others who doubted that the endeavor would last. Slowly, though, a rapprochement took root, and Borgen feels "mo! st people coming here to live today like the arts."

C! ommonwea l sells about 17,000 tickets to six shows year-round, a figure it hopes will rise to 25,000 with the new theater. Likewise, the annual budget will bump up almost 25 percent, to $740,000. If those figures hold, it could represent further economic development for the town. Bunge cites a non-scientific survey of patrons at the Cottage Inn B & B across the street that showed 35 percent had come to Lanesboro for the theater.

"The bike trail brings people to town, but it doesn't keep them overnight," he said. "The theater keeps them overnight."

To the outsider, there is whimsy in the notion of theater artists who might balance their day between studying the psychological impulses of Ibsen and discussing business at City Hall. Bunge and Hal Cropp, Commonweal's executive director, don't take the bait when their twin identities as civic boosters and theater artists are brought up.

"The theater should thrive and survive by being essential to the community," ! said Cropp. "Theater is supposed to be a gathering place, where people share stories, and we need to be aware of our communities -- to challenge people and to entertain them."

Bunge, as earnest as a choirboy, said simply: "It is our duty to fill the theater with honorable work."

Matter of need, not want

Cropp notes that Commonweal didn't so much want a new theater as it needed one. A quick trip through the converted St. Mane movie house, where the troupe has performed for 18 years, would convince even the harshest skeptic. Cramped and narrow in the auditorium, its technical spaces are a horror show.

In the new space, 190 seats -- 153 of them salvaged from the old Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis -- ring three sides of the stage. Despite the airy feel and the larger space, the arrangement brings audiences closer to the stage.

"It's a whole new playing field," said Jamie Horton, who was directing a rehearsal of ! "Wait Until Dark" on a recent afternoon. "I love looking aroun! d and se eing the old seats from the Guthrie, and I'm just stunned by this accomplishment."

As pleasant as the actual auditorium is, though, it's the public spaces that elevate Commonweal's profile to community focal point. Using found objects, Lanesboro native Karl Unnasch designed an eclectic mix of ceiling installations and wall treatments. Baseball bats, golf clubs, coffeepots, spatulas, pitchforks and toboggans are affixed to the lobby ceiling, ringing a large old farm windmill paddle. In the box office, Unnasch hung chairs representing area archetypes -- a lawn chair with fishing pole attached for the angler, a wire-backed chair with a casserole for the pious. For donors who pledged more than $1,000 to the project, Unnasch eschewed mahogany plaques and instead created shelves for Mason jars that contain the donor's name and a resonant trinket. One jar held a miniature church and tractor, another a Spider-Man figure.

Commonweal's total capital campaign is $3.5 ! million. That includes construction costs of $2.4 million and $800,000 for land acquisition and fees. The rest, $300,000, would be an operating reserve. Lead gifts of $500,000 came from the McKnight Foundation and an anonymous individual. The Bush Foundation ponied up $350,000 and the Kresge Foundation has offered a match grant of $300,000 if the $3.2 million construction project cost is reached by Dec. 1. Cropp said 568 donors have contributed an average of $4,000, most coming from within 30 miles of Lanesboro.

"It's not like landing a Ford factory," Cropp said of Commonweal's growing presence in Lanesboro, but the theater reinforces and stabilizes the economy with a population that recognizes the contribution of creative and literate classes -- what writer Richard Florida called "a people climate" in his seminal work "The Rise of the Creative Class."This is a life in the theater, not a career," said Bunge. "We're following through on a promise to build this place! and to give business and commerce and the public a shot in th! e arm. T hey look at us and say, 'If this is possible, what is impossible?' "

Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299 • groyce@startribune.com

Article Published: 06-30-2007