If downtown buildings could speak to one another, what tales would they tell? What would the Mississippi River write in a poem? What are the life stories of those strangers sitting on that bench across Mears Park? Questions like these animate Hidden Herald, a new project from Wonderlust Productions, a theater storytelling organization in Frogtown. At 31 locations around downtown, a QR code links to a short audio play that takes place in and around the spot you’re standing. The plays all begin with a short intro from Herald, the project’s pigeon mascot, and each only has a runtime between 90 seconds and about six minutes.
“In a sense, you’re eavesdropping on people and places you might see if you were walking around downtown,” said Alan Berks, co-founder of Wonderlust Productions and co-director of the Hidden Herald project. “And ideally, hearing stories that are connected to these people and places will make you see where you’re standing differently.” Among the plays that comprise Hidden Herald, one introduces us to a trio of immigrant kids at Candyland on Wabasha Street.
In another, we meet a squirrel who is plotting a takeover of the city — as soon as it outruns the dog chasing it. Walk across downtown, and we reconnect years later with one of the immigrant children, now being naturalized as a U.S.
citizen in a ceremony at Landmark Center. Outside City Hall, we meet a statue on a journey of self-discovery. There’s a sea shanty about downtown’s undergro.