When Stillwater actor Reed Sigmund chose a production for his debut directing adults, he went with a show he’s quite familiar with, “Robin Hood.”

“I always like looking at a classic and asking why it stood the test of time,” said Sigmund, who starred in a 2010 production of the musical at Children’s Theatre Company. “Usually it’s because its relevance is evergreen. I think, right now, the story of Robin Hood is about an abuse of power, relentless oppression, ruling with a complete lack of empathy and understanding for the people who you represent. I won’t get too specific here, but I think anybody in this world who’s willing to open their eyes and take a look around will see exactly how relevant this story is to this time in history.”

Sigmund, who is best known for playing the Grinch at CTC, is directing the show for Stillwater’s Zephyr Theatre, where he’s been director of education since 2021. It’ll be staged outdoors at Aamodt’s Apple Farm in Stillwater from July 25 through Aug. 3.

Here’s what else Sigmund had to say about the experience.

On directing adults for the first time: “I’ve directed students several times, but I’ve never directed professionals. I’ve always loved directing. With students, it’s different because it’s very exciting to watch them grow and to not spoon feed them anything, to just lay out some pebbles and lead them down a path where they can make the discovery themselves.

“You always try not to give them answers because I don’t think any actor likes being told what to do. Part of the reason actors do this is because discovery is fun. Exploring is fun. Creating is fun. As a director, your job is to pave the path for all those things to happen in a healthy and exciting environment.”

On his approach to the craft of directing: “All you can do is pave the way and let people make decisions. It’s like if you’re in the woods, you can chop down some trees. You can clear a little bit here, you can clear a little bit there. But ultimately, you have to say OK, you can come down this path, but there’s going to be places where I’ve not carved the path and you need to figure it out.

“That’s when it’s a fulfilling experience. And then when the show is created, the actors don’t feel like they’re puppets, simply reenacting all these impulses that were fed to them. They feel like the show belongs to them, that the character is their creation. There’s something really exciting about sharing something that you have a sense of ownership with instead of sharing something that ultimately belongs to somebody else.”

Local actor Reed Sigmund works on a production of “Robin Hood” at Aamodt’s Apple Farm in Stillwater. The production runs from July 25 through Aug. 3, 2025 at the farm. (Courtesy of Emily Staloch)

On how this opportunity came about: “At the Zephyr Theater, we have a lot of fantastic programs. We work with Stillwater Community Education and some other schools in the St. Croix Valley. We’re trying to make sure that arts education is accessible to anybody who’s interested. That’s been the focal point, but last summer, the executive director asked if was interested in doing some other projects and projects with professionals. And I said I’d love to.”

On casting “Robin Hood”: “It’s the type of show that doesn’t happen at an audience, it happens with them. That’s something that always excites me. I wanted to bring along a team of artists who I know and trust and love creating with. I reached out to Brandon Brooks, who had been a student actor with me at CTC for almost a decade, and asked him to come play the Sherrif of Nottingham.

“There’s an extraordinary performer named Antonisia Collins who was a production assistant at Children’s Theater a couple years ago, and she’s phenomenal as Robin Hood. I really wanted her to have a space to really take the reins of a show, show every viewer what she can do and let viewers experience the joy that she brings to any moment.

“And then there’s a couple other young, beyond talented performers who wow me and surprise me every time I see them in a show or any time I have the pleasure of just interacting with them. And that’s Grace Hillmyer, who’s playing Maid Marian, and Jeffrey Nolan, who’s playing a variety of parts. They’re also both theater arts educators. And then there’s a former CTC educator and educator in the Twin Cities named Jay Scoggin, who is a wildly talented musician who plays all sorts of instruments. I’ve lucked out with this team that’s willing to go on this ride with me.”

On how working outdoors as a teen with the Trollwood Performing Arts School in Fargo influenced this production: “I think the outdoors are exciting and, you know, unpredictable. Nature is alive and theater is a live art form. Indoor theater is great, but you have complete control over your environment and, to some degree, that does rob theater of its immediacy and its unpredictability. And I think immediacy and unpredictability is what makes theater different from film or television. Anything can and will happen. And that’s part of what makes it thrilling.

“I think if there’s ever a piece that belongs next to the mysterious and thrilling and somewhat dangerous woods, I think ‘Robin Hood’ is that show.”

On what he’s learned while directing adults: “I think being a professional actor now for 25 years, you start to develop your own aesthetic and you work with a variety of directors. You start to develop and create your own style unknowingly. You also learn how you like to be spoken to as an actor and how you like to be included and invited to the table as an actor and how you want your contributions or ideas to be part of the process, not outside of it. That’s been something that’s really important to me.”

‘Robin Hood’

When: 7 p.m. July 25-26 and Aug. 1-2; 2 p.m. July 27 and Aug. 3.

Where: Aamodt’s Apple Farm, 6428 Manning Ave. N., Stillwater. (The show will move into an on-site barn in case of severe weather.)

Tickets: $42.40 (chair seat), $31.80 (bring your own seat) and $16 (bring your own seat ages 10 and under) via stillwaterzephyrtheatre.org.

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Toward the end of May, developer Rob Clapp — known for popular destination projects such as St. Paul Brewing, Can Can Wonderland and the newly reopened Dark Horse Bar & Eatery — logged a win of sorts before the St. Paul Planning Commission, which voted to recommend against the city’s efforts to rezone part of the historic Hamm’s Brewery campus for new housing.

Clapp has long maintained that converting the brewery’s east end parking lot into more than 100 units of affordable housing will eliminate needed parking for his multiple businesses.

Within two hours of the vote, according to Clapp, a senior city planner arrived outside St. Paul Brewing to take pictures that would later be used by the city’s Department of Safety and Inspections to threaten his liquor license. The next day, city inspectors put a stop-work order on a landscaping project at the brewery that was intended to make room for new trees outside the former 11 Wells Distillery.

The stop-work order was resolved within 24 hours through an explanatory telephone call.

The day after that, for reasons that remain unclear, an inspector from the Minnesota Occupational Safety and Health Administration stopped by the distillery, which is not currently open to the public.

Clapp said he doesn’t believe in coincidences.

“It’s just harassment,” said Clapp, in an interview Thursday. “Within two hours of the Planning Commission decision not to rezone, she was there, filing this complaint, which just seems retaliatory. This is coming from PED, which is Planning and Economic Development. It shouldn’t be Planning and Reverse Economic Development.”

The mayor’s office has denied any sort of retaliation. A spokesperson said St. Paul Brewing posted a picture to social media on May 29 showing a completed patio expansion onto city-owned land without a use license from the city’s Housing and Redevelopment Authority. The patio included a portable outdoor stage, sound equipment and lighting constructed without permits, as well as liquor service.

‘Accusations of retaliation are false’

“Accusations of ‘retaliation’ are false,” said Jennifer Lor, the mayor’s press secretary, in a written statement Thursday. “There is no connection between the rezoning hearing on May 30 and actions taken regarding St. Paul Brewing’s unauthorized operations.”

She added: “The city followed standard procedure to confirm the unauthorized operations through interdepartmental collaboration … St. Paul Brewing acknowledged these issues and cooperated with the city to resolve it within a few days.”

Clapp said Friday the simple set-up included string lights that have been on site for several years, as well as a shipping container with no mechanicals, which has been used for the past year as a mobile stage, and a portable generator. City officials from St. Paul Parks and Rec, the Department of Safety and Inspections, Planning and Economic Development and the city attorney’s office had walked through the property on multiple occasions since the stage was installed in June 2004, he said, and they had never previously raised concern.

The war of words between a housing developer, the owner of St. Paul Brewing and top city officials over proposed real estate development at the sprawling, 1865-era brewery on St. Paul’s East Side has entered a new phase, with the restaurant owner accusing city planners of bad faith on the eve of what could be a decisive city council vote.

Developer JB Vang and the St. Paul mayor’s office have long hoped to install dozens of new affordable housing units within the old Hamm’s Brewery campus on Minnehaha Avenue. Those plans hit a major obstacle on May 30 when the city’s Planning Commission determined the proposal involved “spot zoning,” or a zoning reclassification limited to a relatively small parcel of land to accommodate a particular project, which is illegal in Minnesota.

Despite the Planning Commission recommendation, the St. Paul City Council is expected to take up the rezoning question on Wednesday.

Still, the negative decision represented at least a temporary win for Clapp, the principal behind Eclective Creative Collective — a combination of eight restaurants, real estate holding companies and creative businesses — who has argued that housing construction will remove needed parking for a series of businesses he operates on the Hamm’s campus, including St. Paul Brewing, the former 11 Wells Distillery, the Wonder Studio fabrication shop and a planned lounge or event center.

At 11:30 a.m. May 30, within about two hours of the Planning Commission vote, a senior staff member with St. Paul Planning and Economic Development, or PED, was spotted on security video taking photos through a security fence at the back entrance of St. Paul Brewing’s outdoor patio, just as the restaurant was opening, according to Clapp and his Eclective Creative Collective team.

A hand-delivered correction notice

Clapp maintains he recognized the planner and reached out by email to ask what she was looking for and if he could assist. Nicolle Newtown, the city’s PED director, emailed him back to say city staff would be on site from time to time. Part of the brewery campus remains owned by the city’s Housing and Redevelopment Authority.

“We don’t need anything from you at this time,” she wrote. “Thanks much.”

Instead, on June 16, the restaurant received a hand-delivered correction notice from the city’s Department of Safety and Inspections, or DSI, demanding they correct an apparent violation of their liquor license or lose their license entirely. A section of the back patio, near the back exit dock, sits on city land and had offered outdoor seating under a shared-use agreement between the restaurant and the city’s HRA for four years, according to Clapp. The agreement had apparently lapsed.

“We’ve done this for years, where we’ve had a license agreement with the HRA, and no issues,” Clapp said. “We were surprised to find this correction notice coming from DSI, when I’m reaching out twice to (the senior city planner) to see if she needs anything. Any time they’ve made that request, we’ve turned it around in 24 hours, and that’s the end of it. This had a major impact on 25% of our patio for a week during a summer month.”

Sean Ryan, a former project manager with Can Can Wonderland and government relations manager with Clapp’s collective, said they attempted to determine who filed the complaint over the lapsed license near the back dock, but they were informed by DSI that complainant information is protected under data privacy laws.

“We did push back saying that if a city employee did file the complaint in the course of their public work it should be available,” Ryan said. “No response.”

Ryan said the team had hoped, after the May 30 Planning Commission vote, that city planners would sit down with them and attempt to find common ground. Instead, the spot zoning question will go before the city council on Wednesday.

JB Vang’s development plan shrinks

JB Vang was awarded tentative developer status by the St. Paul HRA in 2023 based on a proposal that included at the time a total of 259 affordable housing units and a two-level indoor marketplace.

Under that plan, an existing brewhouse building would be remodeled to host the marketplace and about 84 mostly one- and two-bedroom rentals, as well as some ownership live/work studios. Elsewhere on the campus, the proposal also called for 11 family-sized, owner-occupied rowhomes next to 164 rental apartments in a new building, which would fill in a surface parking lot on the site’s northeast corner.

JB Vang has now put any effort to establish the rowhomes on pause, and reduced the number of proposed units in the new building from 164 to 110 to allow for a 70-stall parking lot. The company also been unable to find a partner to help develop the marketplace.

“The rowhouses were removed from the project based on regulatory issues that prevented rental and ownership units being under the same roof,” said Stephanie Harr, a project development consultant for JB Vang, in an email Friday. “The marketplace component of the project has not executed any contracts with partners yet; we are continuing to talk with potential partners and determining what the partnership arrangement would look like.”

Clapp has said with JB Vang’s tentative developer status expiring this year, the city should work with him to reconfigure the project entirely.

Over Clapp’s objections, the city has nominated much of the brewery campus for a local historic designation, borrowing the boundaries from a previous nomination to the National Register of Historic Places, which was reviewed by the State Historic Preservation Review Board in January.

The city council likely will consider the local nomination in August, with a vote tentatively scheduled for Aug. 20.

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Every day for the past couple weeks, rehearsals for Circus Juventas’s upcoming summer show, “Lumiere,” have been intense.

The full cast and crew arrives around 4:30 and often doesn’t leave till after 10. Students in the youth circus school will perform a few-minute scene, flipping and juggling and dancing, then the adults spring into action.

After one scene, aerial coach Chimgee Haltarhuu shouts a few tips up to four performers suspended in the air on bungees, and choreographer Jarod Boltjes chats with dancers on the ground to help refine their movements. During another scene, as a trio of performers spin on German Wheel and Cyr Wheel, acrobatics coach PD Weisman gives “jazz hands” to remind them to maintain their theatricality.

A pair of Circus Juventas student aerialists hang from a massive chandelier during a rehearsal for the school’s Old Hollywood-themed summer show, “Lumiere,” on July 14, 2025. Alongside aerial acts — including the rare Wheel of Steel — the show also features a variety of juggling, dancing and acrobatics. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)

Meanwhile, along the sidelines, artistic director Rachel Butler-Norris and executive director Rob Dawson check in with the lighting and sound designers, prop masters and artistic staff. The rigging team huddles to discuss the flow of moving safety mats, hooking up aerial equipment to the rafters and preparing for the next scene.

“At this point, all the acts are set, all the choreography is set,” Butler-Norris said. “It’s really just those little details that connect it all together so we have that seamless flow. It’s sculpting it, making it cleaner and clearer every time we do it.”

The show’s plot sees five kids zapped first from 1985 back to 1935, to the fictional Hotel Lumiere during the Golden Age of Hollywood, then subsequently through a portal to a Twilight Zone-style world they have to escape to return to their own timeline.

“Lumiere” runs for 15 performances between Friday, July 25 and Sunday, Aug. 10. Tickets range from $25 to $55 and are available online at circusjuventas.showare.com or by phone at 651-309-8106. Shows take place at the Circus Juventas big top arena; 1270 Montreal Ave.

The show’s vibe is inspired by the classic Tower of Terror ride at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Butler-Norris said.

“The first half (of the show) has all this glitz and glamor, and the second half is much darker and spookier,” she said. “I’ve always loved the Tower of Terror and was really inspired by old Hollywood, the Mission Inn and all that decor, the cobwebs in the lobby, these people in an old elevator that gets struck by lightning. Then we created our own narrative to the story.”

Performers rehearse on the Wheel of Steel for Circus Juventas’ annual summer show in 2021. (Courtesy of Dan Norman)

During the first half of the show, bellhop characters ride on luggage carts and toss suitcases. Aerialists swing from a massive chandelier. The climax involves the Wheel of Steel, a massive rotating apparatus that has not been featured in a Circus Juventas show since 2022.

“It’s a very technically high-skill-level act that no other youth circus does,” Butler-Norris said. “We haven’t had students that were at that level the last couple years, and now we have students who have been training really hard to perfect it. I’m really excited for people to see that act because it’s just mind-blowing.”

Everett Smith, 15, is one of six students performing on the Wheel of Steel during the show and has been training at Circus Juventas since he was 2 years old.

“I was skeptical at first, because I’d seen it and it was freaky, honestly,” he said. “It’s a little less freaky now. When you’re in the moment, you kind of forget how dangerous it is.”

The second half of the show features fire acts, which have become an impressive mainstay of Circus Juventas shows in recent years. In one scene, Jacy Johnson Becker, 17, spins a long staff that’s flaming on both ends, “like what Darth Maul has, if you’ve seen Star Wars,” he said. To learn to perform circus acts with fire, he said, coaches first guide students to feel comfortable extinguishing small flames, then larger ones, and meanwhile they learn to perform the acts without fire.

“Really, fire just makes it look cool,” Johnson Becker said. “But if you can do the trick without fire, you can do it with fire.”

Tilly Breimhorst, 17, who plays a main bellhop and performs in Russian Cradle, has been training with Circus Juventas for more than a decade. While her primary focuses are theatrics and dancing, she said, she appreciates that she’s constantly able to explore different acts and gain new skills.

“Our coaches here are so supportive of us,” she said, “and that makes it a lot easier to get skills down, because you know your coaches are there for you.”

Other performers agree.

“It’s just very rewarding, learning a new trick and having friends supporting you,” Smith said. “It’s fun to come out and do. You forget about a lot of things and just flip away.”

If you go

What: Circus Juventas’ summer show, “Lumiere”

Description: The St. Paul youth circus school, the largest in North America, is showcasing its top students’ skills in this show that blends Old Hollywood and the Twilight Zone.

When: 15 total performances, including matinee and evening shows, from Friday, July 25, through Sunday, August 10

Where: Circus Juventas Big Top, 1270 Montreal Ave., St. Paul

Tickets: $25-$55; circusjuventas.showare.com or by phone at 651-309-8106

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A man was arrested Saturday morning after he fired several shots into windows between the front doors of the Sherburne County government center in Elk River, Minn., and entered the building, an official said.

The man was arrested outside the building as he was walking away holding a long gun, Sherburne County sheriff’s Cmdr. Ben Zawacki said. Nobody was injured.

The suspect has been booked at the Sherburne County jail and has been identified as Zha Vang, 51, of Elk River.

Several law-enforcement agencies responded to the government center at about 9:30 a.m. after the reports of shots fired.

An investigation is underway into whether Vang committed any other crimes before and/or after shooting at the building.

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