The Beginning of “Bohemian Flats”: A Collaborative Music-Theatre Experiment
This is an experiment in music and theatre; it’s a demonstration of students working alongside professionals and faculty as they create something meaningful and unique.
“Bohemian Flats” premiered at Rarig Center in April 2026, and this is the story of how it went from idea to performance in just six weeks. The project, directed by Lisa Channer, explores a lesser-known pocket of Minneapolis history while offering a sneak peek at the early stages of musical production. We see two departments coming together and new ideas circulating throughout the Arts Quarter. The inspiration for this project was drawn from the west bank of our campus, where the Mississippi River flows along a once-populated area.
Here’s a glimpse at what creating a musical theatre presentation can look like. We hear from the perspectives of Margaret Werry, then chair of theatre arts & dance; Talvin Wilks, dramaturg; Anna Pladson, stage manager; and Kenji Yang, student collaborator. Together, they show us what being hands-on in the local theatre world can look like, from student to professional.
Bohemian Flats history
Students and collaborators hit the ground running in mid-March to begin piecing together the history of the Bohemian Flats Park, an area inhabited by a diverse community of mostly European immigrants from the 1860s to the early 1930s.
The western banks of the Mississippi River became home to thousands of settlers after arriving from Nordic countries, Ireland, and what was then Czechoslovakia.
Despite the joys of living in a community where they could speak their native languages, secure affordable housing, and find nearby work, the residents faced many challenges. Some were natural disasters; others were caused by humans.
Yearly springtime flooding swept away homes and sometimes lives, causing waves of devastation that would only heighten as disease spread throughout the Flats due to the city’s failure to extend sewage service to the area. But it wasn’t until the properties were condemned in 1931 that most residents were left with no other choice but to move.
The Flats’ gardens and colorful houses, combined with the residents’ resilience and unyielding sense of togetherness, continue to inspire artists today. When student collaborator Kenji Yang considered the full concept of the “Bohemian Flats” project, the result was feelings of closeness and courage. “We’re doing this together, as a community,” Yang says, “just like the residents of the Bohemian Flats did.”
Setting the early stages
When thinking about the foundations of the project, Margaret Werry noted a few pillars:
It's an experiment with new work creation in the space of musical theatre, an exploration and space to think critically and creatively about questions of immigration history and immigrant justice, and it’s a production, so our students are learning amazing skills in collaboration, and also getting to work with a range of professionals in the field.
Margaret Werry
Working with professionals who have been in theatre for years offers students the opportunity to demonstrate their skills and establish connections that can last into life beyond graduation. It’s a course better described as a creative space or developmental workshop where students are given real-world theatre responsibilities under the mentorship of experienced professionals and faculty.
Talvin Wilks walked into the project with experience as a director and playwright, but his knowledge of dramaturgy helped the students get the project off the ground.
Collaborative work like this, combined with a learn-by-doing approach, can inspire in a number of ways. Students welcomed the challenge to lead various parts of the project, and new doors are beginning to creak open in the theatre and music buildings. “Our purpose is to launch the idea that we are beginning to develop new programs,” he explains, “and to show the department that we are very much a devising development program.”
One such program whispered about in these halls is a degree program in musical theatre. And while it’s still very much in the early stages, this project has given the School of Music and Department of Theatre Arts & Dance a hopeful view for the future.
At this point, it’s a community
This is so much more than a one-track class. With 12 student collaborators, 12 professional mentors, and five dramaturgs, members of the project gain a rare opportunity to share perspectives and ideas from all levels of experience.
As stage manager, Anna Pladson made a point to zoom out and acknowledge the many connections being made throughout the Minneapolis arts community:
We have writers, we have directors, we have musicians. With this studio specifically, bringing in that many people was key to what we are trying to do. The Bohemian Flats story is so rich in the people that lived there, and you can’t tell that story with just one director and actors walking around. You need the musical aspect, you need the writers, you need other storytellers. You need that physicality because that community was all of those things.
Anna Pladson
Trust the process
During the first rehearsal, Lisa Channer called attention to the project’s anchor and focus: the creative process of developing a musical. The key word is process, as the main limitation here is time. Developing a musical is a task that can take years to complete, but for this team of students and mentors, they had a mere five weeks.
“In a very conventional production process,” Werry explains, “you map out everything that’s going to happen six months in advance, and when you start the rehearsal process, you know what the endpoint is going to be, and every part of the process is really clear and mapped out.”
Instead of aiming for the impossible task of creating a complete production, students and mentors began piecing together an original presentation of music and theatre built on Minneapolis history. The team relied on intuition and communication during the rush and uncertainty of development, “and that asks a lot of courage from the students,” Werry concludes.
Pladson notes that there is much to learn from the Bohemian Flats community and working on a project like this. The love, loss, laughter, tears, and life that the Flats once knew mark the beginning of many stories soon to be told through the arts.
The whole endeavor is a creative learning exercise that gives new meaning to trusting the process and taking a leap of faith in storytelling through musical theatre.
The Next Act
The fall ‘26 class TH 4380 - BA Studio Production: Creative Collaboration is exploring how theatre can be used to understand and creatively communicate the history of voting rights and their modern-day impact.
October 16–18, 2026 | Rarig Center | Xperimental Theatre
A journey through the history of suffrage and disenfranchisement in America, the Voting Rights Project is a timely, collaborative devised theatre performance created in the urgent style of the Federal Theatre Project’s historic Living Newspaper. Fusing historical documents, speeches, songs, and modern headlines, this studio piece traces the evolution of American suffrage — from the nation's founding documents and the Civil Rights Movement to current Supreme Court rulings and ongoing voting restriction debates — to creatively respond to the challenges facing democracy today.
“Ride the Cyclone” Musical
November 6–15, 2026 | Rarig Center | Whiting Proscenium
Six teenagers. One catastrophic accident. One impossible second chance.
The BA Performance Program and the School of Music present “Ride the Cyclone,” a darkly comic, whimsical, and unexpectedly moving musical.
This story was written by Caroline Miltich and Deborah Sventek, undergraduate students in CLA.
