“In the past, I’d try to encourage star performers, and the result wouldn’t be that good,” she says. While famously supportive, Ball doesn’t direct the action onstage. Ball was going to call her cabaret Café Courageous before settling on the twist of her surname. At Balls, you can find out if something is what you think it is.” That takes guts, of course, or, well, cojones. “Until something is performed, you don’t know what you have because it’s not living in its form,” he says. Storyteller Kevin Kling often tries out new material at Balls.
“We were very afraid.”) Part of the fun of attending Balls is the potential of seeing a star performer emerge, and several have in fact gone on to Hollywood, including Craig Wright (writer, Six Feet Under and Lost), Mo Collins (actor, MadTV), and Jhoni Marchinko (co-executive producer, Will & Grace). (“It was terrifying,” says Hoptman about the act. There have been actors, songwriters, storytellers, and a guy who juggled torches. And another who brings his rotund cat, Brunswick (named after the bowling ball company), to the cabaret every year on the anniversary of Brunswick’s adoption, and sings to him. Comedian and storyteller Ari Hoptman recalls an act that consisted entirely of performers building a crate onstage. (“I wanted to show that to be an artist you don’t have to be high on chemicals,” says Ball.) And cabaret can mean anything. The premise of Balls is simple: anyone can perform for seven minutes, and all participants must be sober. (“I’m not sure who lives there now,” she says about her New York apartment, “or what happened to my stuff.”) But the response was so strong that she postponed her return…and postponed it again. While in town, she decided to try out “this little cabaret idea.” She planned to sublet her apartment for six weeks, host the cabaret, then return to New York. She was involved with No Shame, a forum for writers and actors to try out new work, when she returned to Minneapolis for a stint in film. A Duluth native, Ball moved to New York in the 1980s with $20 in her pocket and a gig lined up as a cat sitter.
3 minutes to midnight band mn series#
The emcee is Leslie Ball: musician, director, singer, songwriter, actor, host, founder, and den mother of Balls Cabaret-the midnight Saturday series she started on a whim at the Southern 15 years ago this month. “Hello and welcome,” she says, “to the longest-running weekly cabaret in the history of humankind.” “Yea!” the woman enthuses, “We love newcomers!” Soon, she’s onstage, cradling a microphone in her hands. When a ticket buyer admits this is her first visit, a cheer erupts from behind the bar and a striking woman with long feathered hair and a gauzy black skirt steps forward. “Crack cake,” jokes a box office employee. IT’S FIVE MINUTES to midnight, and in the lobby of the Southern Theater, two dozen people crowd around a ziggurat of juice boxes and vegan cake.
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