Ain't Behavin'

Knox lives in a house on a sunny corner in Minneapolis’s Corcoran neighborhood. A red cedar picket fence surrounds her small yard, which is home to two golden retrievers who enthusiastically try to knock me over when I open the front door. Knox attempts to muscle her way through inches of thick fur, shouting, “Take a seat on the couch when you can!” Everywhere the eye can see, there are foot-high piles of yellowing newspapers. Old theater props gather dust in various corners. Scripts and Frank-related paperwork are carefully stacked like back issues of The New Yorker. Two phones lines—both of which lead to Frank’s voice mail—are within easy reach. If it seems like Frank has invaded Knox’s life, it’s because Frank is her life. Even the downstairs bathtub has become a storage facility for odds and ends left over from various productions.

After she’s calmed her dogs, Knox relaxes in a worn sofa chair and frowns as she talks about what some of her detractors have said about her in print. A story that was published a year ago this month still irks her. A newspaper critic lauded Knox’s artistic adventurousness, but went on to say that Frank’s productions don’t always succeed because the material exceeds her skill. Maybe, she suggests, she’s just speaking a “different language”—one this particular critic doesn’t happen to understand.

At fifty, Knox is still as fearless as she was when she was an undergrad at Grinnell College in Iowa. While there, she became close friends with Fritz Ertl, who now teaches theater and acting at New York University. “As a bad-girl poster child, Wendy is a great role model for girls,” Ertl wrote in an e-mail message (he calls Knox his daughter’s titular godmother). “The fact of the matter is, Wendy is bigger than life. She’s huge in every way imaginable. She’s outspoken and ornery and very, very stubborn. She’s also incredibly opinionated, which makes some people uncomfortable, but she’s also really smart and dedicated and works like a dog. She probably has as much integrity about her work as anyone I know, which comes from an innate inability to compromise ever, about anything. Such integrity takes its toll, however, because in order to do things the way she wants them done, she has to do it all herself. Institutions are scared of her. Subscribers don’t like bad girls.”

Subscribers beware: This pronouncement will be put to the test from September 20 through October 14 when Frank Theatre invades the Guthrie’s Dowling Studio with its production of Martin McDonagh’s creepy thriller, The Pillowman. The Guthrie is an incongruous place for Frank to make an appearance, and it’s a big step up in terms of visibility. Knox pitched the play to the Guthrie because she thought it would work well in the small, black-box theater, which the Guthrie has been extending to smaller companies in the community. This isn’t the first time Knox has directed for the big G—her Lysistrata sold out at the Guthrie Lab eight years ago—but it is her first time in the new building.