Things to Do in Forest Lake

Located in the Dayton’s Bluff area, historic Mounds Theatre is a great spot to experience live theatre, movies, and occasional paranormal encounters. Knotareel Getaway Cruise is an interactive dinner-theater production written by Greg Eiden that features musical comedy and a gaggle of mimicking pirate parrots all named Polly. You’ll ward off scurvy thanks to the show’s dinner menu, which offers roasted chicken with herb vinaigrette, fettuccine or linguine (tossed with olive oil, fresh basil, and garlic), vegetable medley, field green salad, and chef’s choice dessert. You’ll also be supporting a good cause since the theater is home to the Portage for Youth, a nonprofit organization serving disadvantaged youth that collaborates with arts and cultural groups.

Discover your inner Davy Crockett with today's Groupon. For $5, you get admission to the 40th Annual Minnesota Sportsmen's Show any day from Wednesday, January 13, through Friday, January 15, at the Saint Paul River Centre. Gawk at great outdoorsy goods (RVs, motor homes, travel trailers, fishing boats), attend free fishing and hunting seminars, plan your next excursion, and witness a water-skiing squirrel purchasing a motor home.

While memberships must be activated by May 16, membership benefits last for one full year from activation.

Minnesota Opera transports audiences into the romantic, opulent, and dangerous world of eighteenth-century Parisian high society with the opera classic that inspired the feature film Moulin Rouge!. Led by Georgia Jarman, La traviata tells of the descent of a courtesan who must repress her love for a younger man and her obsession with anything in a ruffled collar. The opera—featuring such timeless arias as the intoxicating opener "Libiamo Ne' Lieti Calici" and the tender "Un Di, Felice Eterea"—is sung in Italian with a translation projected above the stage for those following along from their seats. Audience members choosing not to spend their night at the opera reading can simply listen to the soaring score of Giuseppe Verdi's masterpiece, which perfectly captures the passion and underlying sadness of its world of beauty-obsessed libertines, much like a dove's song captures the feeling of putting your toe socks on the wrong feet.

For 53 years, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra has engaged eardrums with a vast repertoire of classical masterpieces and 128 newly commissioned works, earning 15 ASCAP awards for its adventurous programming. This season, the distinguished troupe hosts a quintet of internationally acclaimed artistic partners, a group that consists of visiting conductors, singers, fog horns, and musicians whose varied styles diversify the orchestra's huge selection of performances. During a marathon concert season, the orchestra's nimble bows and lusty horns leap and dash through the notes of Mendelssohn, Schubert, Haydn, and Mozart in dozens of concert dates. Awe strikes audiences during a rousing performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 (November 25–27), and Dawn Upshaw—recipient of a rare MacArthur Genius Award—sings sweetly in "Upshaw Sings Ravel and Debussy" (February 16 and 18). Many Friday and Saturday performances also include free preconcert discussions, which bring scholars, guest artists, conductors, and musicians to chat with audiences about the upcoming performance and their favorite mac 'n' cheese recipes.

When the Minneapolis Institute of Arts first opened its doors in 1915, it was the product of several decades of arts advocacy. A group of 25 citizens formed the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts in 1883 with the goal of giving their community access to creative arts. More than a century later, this commitment to the community has taken the permanent collections from 800 works to close to 80,000 objects and has made the institute Minnesota's largest art educator.

The collections, divided into seven curatorial areas, encompass a period of 5,000 years and hail from every corner of the world. The Asian Art collection represents 17 different Asian cultures, and Arts of Africa and the Americas holds more than 3,000 pieces of sculpture, basketry, painting, and beadwork. Temporary exhibitions bring collections of artwork from other institutions and tattoos from vending machines. The institute's interactive learning stations supplement understanding of topics such as modernism or 17th-century European painting with animation, video, and audio recordings.