Some places around town -- under-used, in transition -- seem to be waiting in the wings for their moment in the spotlight.
Skewed Visions, a site-specific performance company based in northeast Minneapolis, makes such places part of the show.
Skewed Visions performances have taken place at sites ranging from the Grain Belt Brewery office building in Northeast to a storefront in Minneapolis' Elliot Park neighborhood and the old Drake Marble building on St. Paul's West Side.
As he ticks off those and other performance locations, founding member Charles Campbell notes that every one of the buildings Skewed Visions has visited has seen a new use since.
Moving outside the world of ready-made stages and seats is no simple matter. The company encounters many of the same obstacles that developers -- or other site-specific visual artists, such as Christo -- face when they try to make permanent or even temporary additions to the urban landscape.
Skewed Visions has a light touch at the locations where they perform, Campbell insists: "It's not a high-impact kind of thing."
At the moment, Skewed Visions has its sights set for a future production at a downtown St. Paul site that Campbell wants to keep secret until negotiations with local governmental agencies and other organizations are further along. The performance will be based loosely on "Austerlitz," a book by the late German author W.G. Sebald.
Skewed Visions' goal is "to make something exciting to witness," Campbell says -- "to engage not just the audience but the spaces."