History Alive Lanesboro

History Alive! Lanesboro presents original  Southeast Minnesota history programs through the arts: acting, storytelling, dance, music, and writing.  We hope to foster community identity and the understanding of American small town heritage.

We created a new theater form, our Pop-up Plays , to bring theater to the many actual historic sites, indoors and out,  in our town of Lanesboro. Each year our director, playwright, and historian Jane Peck writes new plays  highlighting a new time period and its  local characters and events.  Pop-up Plays are filled with music, dance, laughter, and tears as well as 40  performers and crew of all ages, both professional and amateur.

WHAT HAVE WE BEEN DOING THIS YEAR?

 We recently performed in late September, " Pop-up Plays: Lanesboro WW 2 and Beyond", in 7 sites around our town of Lanesboro. The brilliant new script was based on oral interviews with local veteran and farm families as well as hours spent in Lanesboro History Museum. Among our scenes and characters were the vets at the pool hall, tales from relatives in Norway, the Japanese-American nurse from Rochester, old newsreels and cartoons, even a scene of Buck Rogers and the 25th c. by our child actors!

A local audience member quipped, "You've given us back our local stories that we forgot!" A visitor effused, "There is true genius in these plays; full of solid multi-ethnic history and still so very entertaining!" 

We are proud that we could offer these for free, with only suggested donations. We believe the history of small-town America belongs to us all! Our plays of 6 eras and seasons can be viewed for free as well on YouTube. OFFERING IMPORTANT STORIES FOR FREE MEANS WE NEED LOTS OF DONATIONS!  

A GIFT FOR YOU AND ONE FOR US!

You can view "Lanesboro WW 2 and Beyond"  on YouTube  at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNHzoK_-IPpc1fcwV2gu6L14m6FBEdFgV or Go to YouTube and search HISTORY ALIVE LANESBORO. Enjoy our scenes of many eras of small town life FOR FREE. Help us keep this possible! DONATE!  The play and videos  of WW 2 in small town MN were possible thanks to YOUR  generosity and the MN Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund . 

OUR PLANS

2022 Pop-up Plays will reflect 1935 Lanesboro with its Roma (gypsy) visitors, Depression-era homeless, and a Norwegian-American  play.  During 2022  we will  reach out to other towns with some of our shows, WITH YOUR SUPPORT!

 Join us next year during the last two weekends of September. Following Covid guidelines kept our cast and audiences safe.  You can trust us.  Our website, https://historyalivelanesboro.org 

Decoration Day 1948 (now Memorial Day) from "Pop-up Plays: Lanesboro WW 2 and Beyond" produced by History Alive Lanesboro 2021.