Four Is Enough

Though these elements aren’t related, the foursome is confident they will come together. Improvisation will help the dancers turn their ideas into movement, and, eventually, they’ll pull together a show—a rich, funny, and sad human story told through powerful movement, commonplace speech, and dramatic images. “We trust that our research will reveal why our intuitions led us there in the first place,” says Odell. “What I’ve found intriguing in their work,” says Bither, “is that there’s a kind of surreal logic, a sense that anything could happen.”

How does the Set know it will work? Because they’ve done it before and had remarkable success. Their last production, Please Don’t Blow Up Mr. Boban, a complex story about life in a war zone, which premiered at the 2005 Fringe Festival and had an encore run at the Loring Playhouse, received best-of awards from both City Pages and the Star Tribune. 

In 2002, after a year at the Dell’arte School of Physical Theatre in California, Noah Bremer returned to Minnesota, where he’d graduated from the University of Minnesota’s theater program. Through the network of Twin Cities performers, he met Galen Treuer and Vanessa Voskuil. Both Treuer, known for his athletic dancing, and Voskuil, for her natural movement and poetic choreography, wanted to experiment with more theatrical performance styles. Along with Natasha Hassett (who later quit working with the group to concentrate on her band and Catalyst Dances), the three created Taking Up the Slack, a show for an alt-theater series that ran in late 2002.

Megan Odell, a performer who’s equally at ease acting and dancing, was in the audience. She wasn’t in need of work, but she says what she saw them perform that night was everything she’d been looking for—”theatrical, movement-based, funny, touching, honest, absurd.” Afterward, Odell discussed the show with Bremer, suggested expanding it for the Fringe, and said she’d like to be involved in any of their future projects.

Odell’s enthusiasm encouraged Bremer and the others to continue working together—and when they did, Bremer called Odell. In 2003, the group expanded the show into Exposure, which they performed at that year’s Fringe Festival. One thing led to another, and the four soon found themselves creating a show for the 2004 Fringe.

Also in 2004, the group chose its name. Treuer wanted a succinct name to describe his artistic activity. “Dancer” didn’t fit, since Treuer found himself doing more than dancing onstage; he spoke, acted, clowned, and mimed. He decided the common element was live performance—his body moving in front of the audience—and he came up with “Live Action Artist.” It wasn’t long before he and the others realized that the phrase particularly applied to their collaboration and expanded the name to “Live Action Set.” Jon Ferguson, who directed the Set (and others) in Please Don’t Blow Up Mr. Boban, says that when he first saw the Set perform, he noticed “their ability to create really beautiful and quirky vignettes.” But it was their movement that caught his eye. “When they danced, I thought, ‘OK, that’s what they do. Ah, they’re really good at that.’ They’re incredible movers,” he says.

The Set’s name also reflects the members’ refusal to erect boundaries between different types of performance. They don’t want to limit their choices or ignore any of their many interests, which include mythology, Chinese medicine, capoeira, and clown technique. Beyond collaborating with each other and Ferguson, they’ve also worked with playwright Abi Basch, musician Rebecca Disrud, architect Dan Verycrusse, and others. The Set has danced, acted, sung, hung from the ceiling, stumbled like zombies, clowned, and even been absent. They’ve performed in the round, on a frozen lake, in a lobby, and outside Barbette.