Paul Bunyan Playhouse board salvages 2024 season, announces 3 plays

Dennis Doeden, The Bemidji Pioneer, Minn.
·3 min read

Apr. 29—BEMIDJI — After a time of uncertainty about a 2024 season for the renowned Paul Bunyan Playhouse, the professional summer stock company plans to present three plays in its 73rd year in Bemidji.

Board member Jeremiah Liend confirmed last week that the Playhouse has hired Philip Hoks as artistic director for the season, which will tentatively open July 11 with "The Foreigner."

Subsequent plays will be "The Importance of Being Earnest" and "The Pirates of Penzance." Each will have a two-week run at the Chief Theater, which is owned by the nonprofit theater company.

The Paul Bunyan Playhouse made an inauspicious debut in 1951 at Ruttger's Birchmont Resort when a troupe of actors from New York came to town, according to Playhouse archives. But the production went broke in a month.

The Playhouse website adds, "This was long enough to hook Bemidji's citizens, who raised enough money to pay the actors' room and board while they performed the rest of the season's plays and to pay for their tickets home. Then, the town raised enough to pay for a season the next year, and the year after that."

Now, the Paul Bunyan Playhouse is the longest-running summer stock theater company in Minnesota. In 1992, it moved from Ruttger's to its current home at the Chief Theater in downtown Bemidji. The only season that was canceled was 2020 during the COVID pandemic.

"Every live performance institution has taken a really huge hit with COVID, and institutions in rural Minnesota took a harder hit than most," said Liend, one of two new members of the Playhouse board. "We're still feeling that rebound effect coming back from COVID."

The current board of directors, made up of holdovers Forrest Ross and Jordan Mann and newcomers Liend and Erik Bergsven, has been meeting weekly to make plans for the 2024 season and beyond. It hopes to recruit additional board members.

"We're doing everything we can to get things moving as quickly as possible, and to get the board reconstituted," Liend said.

Last week the board hired Hoks, a freelance theatrical designer and director from Minneapolis, as artistic director for 2024. Hoks, who grew up in Thief River Falls, has been the set designer for the Paul Bunyan Playhouse in recent seasons.

"I am glad that they have decided they are going to put the money behind putting the season together," Hoks said. "I think it's going to be a really fun season. We're doing some older work, but my thing with older work is I like to make it new again. It's probably not going to be the show you remember."

While lead roles will be filled by professional actors from around the region, Hoks said the Playhouse plans to cast community members as well.

"With talks between myself and the board, we've decided we want to try to incorporate more people from the community, especially for those minor parts," Hoks said. "So we're actually going to hold two days of auditions in Bemidji toward the end of the month. We'd like to have more engagement within the community."

Liend said he expects the

Playhouse website

to be updated soon with specific dates and ticket information.

"We want this to be an asset to the community," Liend said. "I want my children to be able to enjoy theater and have an active relationship with the arts throughout their lifetimes. It will be a group effort. A part of this new board structure and direction is also trying to reconnect with the community."