(gentle music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

- R-Town, the show about Rochester, learns about a local women's organization dedicated to empowering African women.

We also get a look behind the curtain with the Rochester Rep and get a little messy in a smash room.

All that coming up next on R-Town, the show about Rochester.

(upbeat jazzy music) Coming to you from 125 Live in Rochester, Minnesota, R-Town.

(upbeat jazzy music continues) The Rochester Repertory Theatre is celebrating its 40th anniversary and here to tell us more about this milestone and the upcoming new season of productions at the theater is Managing Director at the Rep, Philip Muehe.

Welcome to R-Town, Philip.

- Thanks for having me, good to see you.

- It's great to see you.

- (chuckles) Yeah.

- So the Rep is turning 40.

- [Philip] Yes.

- Can you tell us a little bit about what the Rep is and what this milestone means?

- Yeah, so we're a small community theater.

We opened in 1984.

We were on Broadway for many years, but our building got torn down, so now we're over on 7th Street over by Silver Lake and Kruse Lumber, but 40 years is a fantastic achievement for any nonprofit, but let alone a theater company.

We strive to provide programming that you might not see at other theaters in town, or similar things you'd see in the Twin Cities, stuff like that.

- Wonderful.

I've been to the theater, I've been in production at the theater.

- [Philip] Yes, you have.

- And the theater itself is a little different than other theaters in terms of the space.

Can you tell us a little about that?

- Yeah, well first of all, just to embarrass you, you were awesome in "A Raisin in the Sun" and I hope you come back soon.

But the Rep is very unique for many other theater in town.

There are 85 seats and it's configured into what's called a thrust, so there's seating on three sides so you're not far away from the action.

Every play feels very intimate and very personal.

It's right in the laps of the audience, which is really cool.

- Your new season is about to kick off, or has it kicked off already?

- October 6th we open.

- About to kick off.

What productions can we look forward to this season?

- Oh, there's six great stories we have for you.

We're gonna open with "Tick, Tick...

Boom!"

the musical about Jonathan Larson and his creation of the musical "Rent."

There's a Netflix adaptation with Andrew Garfield, so you can see it in real life.

We're gonna do a classic with "Hamlet."

We're doing "Heathers: The Musical" this spring, which will be really fun.

And then we're gonna close with a sequel to "Raisin in the Sun: Clybourne Park," which will be really great too.

- Wonderful.

This might be an unfair question to ask you as managing director and you probably shouldn't play favorites, but are there any that you're particularly excited about?

- Yeah, selfishly, I'm directing "Heathers" this Spring, so I really, I love the movie and it's irreverent and funny and has a lot to say about bullying and stuff like that, so I'm really pumped for that.

- It seems like it was a good balance of musicals, comedies, dramas, things like that.

Is that something that you strive for every season?

- Yeah, we try to provide a variety of programming for patrons and actors.

We wanna give people opportunities to be part of shows that they might not be able to so a little bit of everything is good.

- So some of the performing arts venues in town and organizations have struggled to get audiences back after covid.

Can you talk a little bit about how the Rep has been engaging audiences and trying to bring people back into the theater?

- Yeah, it's been an uphill battle, but we have been able to kind of bring in a new group of people by the types of programming that we do.

So again, picking shows that might not be done other places or are rare to see that excites actors who wanna be in it, audience who want to come see it.

And then we have a new focused effort on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

So you were in "Raisin in the Sun."

That was our kind of flagship effort to make the Rep a more equitable and welcoming place and focusing on telling stories about a marginalized communities in Rochester and the greater Rochester area 'cause I'm one of those people that thinks theater can change the world, so when we focus on people who need it the most, you know, by narrowing the scope, you ironically broaden the doors for everybody.

- Thank you for sharing that.

For me, that was a really life-changing event and to be able to perform with a cast that was all Black, as well as to perform with audience that was so diverse as well was kind of a once in a lifetime experience.

- Yeah, it was really cool.

- As we're closing up here, you have your shows, it's community theater.

If people wanna get involved in theater, that was my first time in the theater, what would you say to people that are interested in getting involved in theater and any shows that are at going on at the Rep?

- Well, I'll just say that like there's a place for you, regardless of what you do, whether it's on stage, in the booth, in the audience, there's something, we always need help, we always need volunteers, but you can go to RochesterRep.org.

That has all of the information that you'll need and you can follow us on social media under the same name.

- Awesome, and of course, how are people gonna get tickets to this new season?

- They can go to RochesterRep.org.

That has all of our, there's a ticket page there and everything on the homepage is what's currently available for sale.

- Awesome, do you do season passes, tickets?

- We do, we'll have season tickets available till December 10th.

- And remind us when "Tick, Tick...

Boom!"

is opening.

- October 6th.

- Wonderful, thank you so much for joining us, Philip.

- Yes, thanks for having me.

(upbeat jazzy music) - Be sure to stick around.

We have much more coming your way on R-Town.

We break some things at the new Mess Hall and learn a bit about cryotherapy.

We also meet two local leaders dedicated to supporting African women and families in our community.

But up first we check out a hidden gem as we take a tour of the Historic Plummer House in this week's R-Culture segment.

(gentle acoustic guitar music) - The house was built between 1917 and 1924 and Henry Plummer was one of the first doctors outside of the Mayo family that the Mayo Brothers hired.

I'm Les Cookman.

I'm the resident director of the Plummer House in Rochester, Minnesota.

The house has 10 bedrooms and nine bathrooms.

It was built on a quarry.

In fact, the house originally was called Quarry Hill and I've seen cards that say Dr. Henry and Daisy Plummer, Quarry Hill, they had made about the house.

The living room is 20 feet by 40 feet, has a wonderful fireplace at one end and it also at the other end and it walked right out into the greenhouse.

When the family lived her, Daisy loved playing the piano and they had a baby grand that they played.

Sometimes they had two baby grands so that Daisy could have duets for some young doctors or nurses from the clinic.

The favorite room for both Daisy and Henry was the library.

It's lined with books.

Had a big desk for Henry to work in, which was his original desk.

We have a real comfortable chair and ottoman that were original, they'd been recovered.

Had its own fireplace and so they spent a lot of time there.

Then you have the dining room and they had a large dining room table off the dining room.

Then there was a very nice screened porch they spent quite a bit of time on.

Then you take a nice grand stairway up to the second level where you have two guest bedrooms that were right at the top of the steps and then down a little bit farther on the front side of the house was their master bedroom.

Across from the master bedroom was their daughter's bedroom at that time.

The next bedroom was Robert, their son's bedroom.

On top of the second level then there's a beautiful ballroom and they entertained a lot.

They had a special place for extra chairs and tables and they were wonderful to their help, but they had one rule and that was that the help, when they were coming up to serve food or other things, took the back stairs rather than going up the main stair level.

There's a long mall area, they call it, that ran down to the water tower.

We have lots of weddings down that way and lots of weddings in the lower garden.

But we've hosted weddings from 15 people to 100 people and so you can do an intimate wedding or you can do something a bit larger, and wedding and reception can both be held here and we have a lot of that also.

The Plummer house actually is a public facility and it's a grand historical mansion that is now open to the public some days.

It's not shut off.

The grounds are open all the time, so I think it's a little gem in the community and many people don't know that it's a public park.

You can come up here, sit out in the grass anytime that we don't have a rental event.

We kind of feel like we owe it to the family to make sure that it's maintained like it has been for years and years and that it be accessible to the public.

I hope it doesn't ever get to a point where the public's not able to walk around as they are now.

And the rental rates are quite reasonable.

For events, we have events from 25 to 100 people, so it is accessible.

My kids have grown up here.

My grandkids have never known any place else as Grandpa and Grandma's house except for the Plummer House and that's pretty unique, that's pretty special.

- [Announcer] For more information about this story and other R-Town features, connect with us on Facebook, Twitter at KSMQ #RTown or KSMQ.org/RTown.

(upbeat music) - Hello, this is Danielle Teal with R-Town Spotlight and today we have a great offering that we'd like to share with you, Miranda Jessie, and it's called Cryotherapy.

Yes, we talked about it, but there's some other therapies that you do.

Share a little bit more about the business, your role, and what the services are provided.

- So I'm the manager at NxtGen Cryotherapy & Spa.

We have cryotherapy from a full-body chamber, local cryotherapy, if you have any local pain, like a low back bad knee, something specific, red light therapy bed.

We have an infrared sauna and we have compression sleeves, so Normatec compression sleeves.

I'm a massage therapist as well, so I incorporate my techniques too if we need it.

And we have cryoslimming and cryotoning as well on top of all that other stuff.

- We know that, you know, being active and staying healthy, we have to have these solutions to kind of help our bodies recover either through exercise or through other things.

How does an individual go through a process in identifying what are the possible solutions?

- I have a lot of clients that come in like don't know anything about it, so I kind of point them in the right direction.

So if they come in, tell me what's going on with their bodies, I can point them in the right direction with the right therapy and service to do, so if you have a bad knee, I'll kind of say like compression sleeves to local cryotherapy or something like that.

There might be a little circuit you can do to help that area that much more.

You don't have to necessarily be in pain to come in either.

It's good for overall wellness and longevity as well.

So it's pain, it's gonna help with the inflammation and everything in the body as well, but it's good for other things too.

- [Danielle] Share a little bit more about cryotherapy.

What is that?

- Cryotherapy literally means cold therapy.

So when we have a full-body chamber, it's an electric chamber.

We send people in there, it's a -125 degrees, so it's pretty cold.

- That is cold.

(laughs) - It helps with the inflammation in the body, helps you sleep better at night.

In the process of warming back up, you can burn calories.

Once you get out, you get a boost of dopamine as well, so it's lots of benefits with it.

- What are some other offerings that you see benefits from for people that come in?

- So if they have like bad knees or inflammation, they run hot in those areas.

So if they have, we wanna get on top of it, we just try, we do different services to help with that area as much as we can.

- And you mentioned the compression.

Why is that such a benefit in that kind of localized aspect?

- So some stuff just gets so stagnant in the body, it's gonna get it moving around again.

So it's getting the blood flow, the circulation moving.

All that is great to get it on top of that issue.

- What are people's favorite thing to do there?

Is it going into the cryotherapy sessions?

- Yeah.

- Is it?

- A lot of people like that because we send you in with music too, so it's a mental distraction.

Once you go in there, it's all mental, so that's just a distraction.

And it's only three minutes long the first time.

- Oh it's only three minutes.

- You can kind of build from there.

So we take your temperature before you go in and when you come out as well to see how much your skin temp drops so we keep track of that in our notes as well and online, so we kind of play it from there.

For me, I take four minutes to go in the chamber to get my skin to around 40 degrees, so that's kinda what we shoot for is a 40 degree range in the chamber.

- And you mentioned there's some benefits from doing some of these sessions.

Can you share more about those wellbeing benefits?

- So it helps with the elasticity in the skin, so all of us want that youthful look too, so it helps with the elasticity if you have cellulite behind the legs or anything like that, it helps with elasticity, tighten everything up, helps you sleep better at night, helps you with the inflammation in your body, get everything flowing again so there's all sorts of different benefits with it.

- Now where can people find out more information about this?

- You can find us at NxtGenCryo.com, or Facebook or Instagram we have as well.

- Awesome, and any words of wisdom for people trying to stay healthy?

- Yeah, give it a shot.

Sometimes people are a little intimidated by it, but once you do it, you'll see the reason why people love it, so give it a shot.

- Thank you so much, Miranda.

- Thanks for having me.

- This is Danielle Teal with R-Town Spotlight.

(upbeat music) - Hello again, this is Michael Wojcik with your R-Town Fundown.

Fall is a fantastic season in the city of Rochester and there are a lot of events going on and a lot of free events.

One I'd really like to highlight is coming up this Sunday at Cascade Lake Park at 11:00 AM.

we are doing our celebration of opening up some new facilities there that includes the amphitheater and expanded playground, and there will be food and entertainment.

Come on out with a family.

That's 11:00 AM on Sunday.

The Post Bulletin recently reported that attendance has been down for some concerts here in the city of Rochester, and that's likely due with the hangover from the covid-19 pandemic, but all the different performing groups are back in action.

That includes the symphony, the choral and other groups, and you can go out and get season tickets and that helps keep these groups thriving.

"Matilda the Musical" is going on at the Rochester Civic Theater.

That is gonna be going on through October 1st.

You might wanna get tickets early for that because these Civic Theater shows have been so well produced that a lot of times they're selling out, and again, that's gonna be Thursday, Friday, Saturday in the evenings and there's a Sunday matinee through October 1st.

Also going on at Chateau Theater is a production of "Clue" and that's being put on by Absolute Theater and that's going on this weekend as well.

Coming up this weekend, the RDA will be putting on Dogs Downtown.

That is a celebration of dogs and their people.

You are welcome to come on down.

Well-behaved dogs and well-behaved humans are welcome.

And finally, the Rochester Art Center is putting on Storytime + Art and that is a collaboration with the Rochester Public Library.

Again, this is free for the families.

You can check out their website for all the details.

This has been Michael Wojcik with your R-Town Rundown.

(rock music) - [Dan] For R-Town Walkabout, I'm Dan Urlick and today I've decided to check out the splash and smash rooms at The Mess Hall on North Broadway.

(item smashes) - Ooh!

- Looking for something to do, something new.

Wanted to open another business and wife found this, kind of came up with the idea and here we are.

So our first room's in the back, we have our paint rooms.

You basically get five condiment bottles full of five different colors of paint, throw it around, make a mess.

Basically the stuff that you wanted to do when you were as a kid and you would've got in trouble.

- Sure.

- Then in the back we have our two smash rooms where you get 20 glass items, or 20 breakable items, I should say.

Couple electronics, glass, you know, bottles, plates, stuff like that and you'd go to town.

(items bang) (all laughing) (glass clinks) (glass shatters) We really kind of stress the the mental health factor of it, you know, getting that anger out.

- [Dan] So you're all coworkers, right?

- Yes.

- [Dan] Okay, why are you so angry?

(all laugh) - Retail.

- [Dan] So who are you angry at?

- Karens.

- Karens.

- [Dan] Oh, Karens.

- Rules we have is hit towards the black wall.

No throwing stuff up in the air and trying to hit it.

(bat banging) - [Dan] How do you feel after coming out of there?

- Invigorating.

- Satisfied.

- Satisfied and invigorating, I should probably give it a try.

This is for my high school principal.

Jerk.

(mallet bangs) (rock music) (glass shatters) That's satisfying.

(rock music ends) (upbeat music) - We are joined today by Fatuma Ahmed and Khadija Ali here to tell us more about the organization, Pamoja Women and how it's amplifying the voices of East African community members in our city.

Welcome to R-Town, both of you.

- Thank you for having us.

- Thank you.

- So both of you are the leaders and the co-founders of this organization.

Can you tell me a little bit about how it got started and what it means personally to each of you?

- I mean, how it got started is we were just like how we mentioned to you is we met at preschool line and it was, "Oh hi, how are you doing?

How is everything?"

And I'm like, "We're good."

And then from there it was like, "Hey, I do this for the community.

What do you think about it?

Would you want to join?"

And at that time we was just saying hi and bye so when I went to speak to my family, they're like, "How did you go ask someone who you've just met on the preschool that, 'Oh, can we run a nonprofit together?'"

- Yeah, and I've just been around the community a lot.

I went to school for public health, so I am in the community at all times and I've done a lot of things with the Boys and Girls Club back in the day, so I've known a lot of the families here and Fatuma knew some of them, so it's like what we do is the same thing so why not combine this and come together and actually give it a name because we didn't have a name.

It was just something that we would done like through our homes, I would gather women, come to the house if they wanted talk about women's health, any type of things that wanted to talk about is I would bring that forth for them and Fatuma was in the school.

- Yeah, I was in the schools, I was doing all the services and I'm like, "We need something."

When I was thinking about that a year before I met Khadija at the preschool, I was like I was nursing my son and I'm like, "We need to do something in the community, but what is it?"

Then I find, I was like, "We should start an organization that focuses with women."

But at that time I'm like, okay, maybe I'm just too much with my nursing and my stages with the baby, I'm like, it's just too much.

Then I was like, okay, maybe I can come up with a name that slowly and slowly to build up, so Pamoja came from there.

So Pamoja is a Swahili that means united.

So we are uniting everyone together.

When you're thinking about women, it's like we shouldn't be going against each other, but rather work together to make something good.

And then that's how I went to Khadija.

I'm like, "Hey, I have a name."

- And the thing is like for her to say all this, it's like we've seen so many barriers in our community, especially with women from East Africa, West Africa.

It's just like they have this amazing mind of theirs, but it's limited.

They limit it, actually.

- Can you talk a little bit about some of those barriers?

- Yeah, the barriers are like, the first one is language and just like there's abundance of resources in Rochester, it's diverse community, but it's like where do you go to those resources for, so what we've been doing was that with, before the nonprofit, it's like someone would come to you as simple as like, "Okay, my family's going through something, I need help, where can I go?"

So we just send them to the county.

Do they need that?

The county gives them an application to apply for assistance, but then they don't know what to do with that application and then they come back to us again and now I'm taking time out of my home and like sitting down and working with them, they're like, okay, so all these resources are available, we can definitely do them so why don't we team up and have a nonprofit organization where we can actually bring this forth and help the women and the community and that's how.

- Sometimes too when we talk about the barriers, it's like, yes, you speak the language.

Like I came here about 11 years ago and even though I spoke English, I didn't know anyone.

I didn't know places to go, I didn't know how to drive.

I come from a place that I didn't need to drive because the transportation was good.

Then when you come here you're alone.

So I felt that and I'm like, if we could fill that and I spoke the language and I could communicate with people outside, what about those women who come here and do not speak the language?

What happens to them?

And that's why we just continue to help out in the community.

- Yeah, it just became like, it became a program-based nonprofit.

It's like what is there that we need to know and how do we cover it?

- And then you become the connectors and the navigators.

- And then we become the connectors and we invite all different, we invite public health, Mayo, Olmsted, all of them together so we can say that you have the resources, these women need the resources, why don't you come partner up with us and we can do something together.

And that's how a lot of our funding comes from is through partnership and through grants.

- Beautiful.

I love the magic that happened in the preschool parking lot and how it's grown from that.

- That was something.

- And now you do such a rich variety of different things.

You'd mentioned a little bit the focus is really about women.

I was really interested in the your Sister Circles and the women's health piece that you do.

Can you talk a little bit about what the Sister Circles are.

- So far, Sister Circles, it started with one woman coming to us and just saying, "I'm having so many issues.

I don't know what it is, whether it's mental health."

Like a lot of the times our programs, we look at the cultural part of our community.

So with culture, we don't believe in mental health.

It's like something that we shouldn't have as women from Africa.

- It's a stigma within African culture.

- Yeah, it's a stigma.

It's a huge stigma, so it started with one woman coming up to us until this day she's involved in our Sister Circle saying that, "I just wanna be able to come, not go to a doctor and talk to him about all this, but talk to women who will understand me, who look like me."

And then so what we started was we started talking to people and just kind of reaching out to women and saying, "Do you guys wanna come together?

And then any topic you have, we'll talk about it and then we'll bring a professional from outside to come into Pamoja and talk to you guys about it rather than you going on your own."

Because another barrier is like health access.

Some of them don't have that where they can have to go and see a therapist.

So what we said is let's find a donor, someone who can donate their time and come to us.

So it started from I think three and then six and then 25 and then I think the biggest Sister Circle we had was 50 and we didn't know what to do with that so we were like, okay, should we have done like half and half?

And I swear what comes out of that is just that- - It's organic conversation.

- It's organic conversation and then we never have to look for a topic because each time, or a feedback, it just keeps coming.

- [Nicole] Just generates conversation.

- Next week's topic will be something that we've discussed at the end of that meeting day.

- Wonderful.

- Yeah.

- You just had an a cultural celebration in Peace Plaza last month and we have a few minutes left and I just wanted to have you, give you an opportunity to share a little bit about that and the importance, you were talking, Fatuma, about not knowing anybody and finding community and the importance of that type of event here.

- I mean, having the first celebration and here in Rochester Peace Plaza that represents the community that we come from was amazing because people came out and be like, "This is us."

Like you're celebrating us, and for our kids, it's like when people talk about diversity so many times, it's like now we bring the inclusion, like when you're included, so our kids, even though they're born here, they know everything from this side, they can tell their friends about this is what's happening, this is how we celebrate, this is our culture, this is how people address this stuff so to be able to do that in the community was amazing.

- Another thing was that the women, they're amazing.

They're smart, they sell from their homes, but they just didn't know the route to go through that.

They cook, so what Pamoja did was that we partnered up with another organization so we can bring licensing to them.

So we did cottage licensing.

So the day that we had the celebration, they could sell the foods that it's in their home foods and just come there and have that way of them like earning an income, and at the same time bringing all that, there were a lot of boutiques that are run by these women, but it's like in a hidden places.

So for us to have that opportunity and for all our sponsors to come through for us and just say, "Oh, okay, a nonprofit that's couple of years old, that is less than 100,000 a budget a year will put this huge event together at Peace Plaza."

And main idea was to get everyone in Rochester just come and see all this amazing thing that we were doing and that's what happened.

There were women who came there to sell food, women who were selling their clothing, their African traditional clothing, and best of all, all the traditional cultural dances.

- I mean for us too.

- Thank you so much.

Thank you for that.

I will continue to follow your work and I'm so excited about all that you're doing.

And thank you all for joining us today.

I hope that you're excited as I am to check out the new season at the Rep and hopefully you're inspired to take a trip to Plummer House or maybe smash some things at The Mess Hall.

But for more wonderful content produced right here in Rochester, please be sure to check us out on Facebook and Twitter at #RTown.

I'm Nicole Nfonoyim-Hara and I'll see you next week.

(upbeat music) (gentle music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.