A Prairie Home Companion is a live radio variety show created and hosted by Garrison Keillor. The show originates from the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota and generally runs two hours on Saturday afternoon from 5 to 7 p.m. Central Time. It is produced by Prairie Home Productions and distributed by American Public Media, and is most often heard on public radio stations in the United States. Approximately 3.9 million U.S. listeners tune in each week. The program is also carried around the world by the American Armed Forces Radio Network as well as America One.
The Prairie Home Companion show has a long history. Keillor developed the idea for a radio variety show that had musical guests and commercials for imaginary products after researching the Grand Ole Opry doing an article for New Yorker magazine. On July 6, 1974, the first live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion took place. The program was named after the Prairie Home Cemetery in Moorhead, Minnesota, located next to Concordia College. The show was broadcast from St. Paul, Minnesota in the Janet Wallace Auditorium of Macalester College. Twelve audience members turned out, mostly children with a total gate of less than $8.
During its first 10 years, A Prairie Home Companion produced 477 live shows. On March 4, 1978, the show moved to The World Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The theater was boarded-up and expected to be demolished, but Prairie Home Companion breathed new life into the capitol city landmark. After renovations and an eventual name change to the Fitzgerald Theater, a Prairie Home Companion has been in the same spot ever since.
The Prairie Home Companion show features a variety of monologues, comical bits, musical acts and great story-telling from Keillor, claiming to be a report from Keillor's fictitious hometown of Lake Wobegon, "the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve . . . where the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all the children are above average". The opening words of the story telling monologue usually do not change: "It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, my hometown, out on the edge of the prairie." The News from Lake Wobegon does not have a set structure per se, but often features recurring characters and places.
Music is a very strong feature of the Prairie Home Companion program. The show is a significant outlet for American folk music of many genres, especially country, bluegrass, blues and gospel, but the show also has guest performers from a wide variety of other styles of music including classical and opera and from a number of different countries. While much of the show is directed toward radio comedy, a portion of the show is usually devoted to more sentimental and sometimes dark stories put together by Keillor and others. The program occasionally features political satire, which usually reflects the progressive nature of Minnesota politics.
In 2006, Hollywood took note of Garrison Keillors Prairie Home Companion and created a blockbuster film starring Keillor as himself and casted many other Hollywood stars including Tommy Lee Jones, Meryl Streep and Lindsay Lohan. Because the Fitzgerald is a rather small building, other stage theaters in the Minneapolis St. Paul area had been considered as stand-ins. With some effort, the necessary film equipment was crammed into the Fitz and the basement was used for sets due to lack of space. Set design also had to make the show more visually interesting, and fake dressing rooms were used in the film because as the movie's production designer noted, Keillor's actual dressing room is "about the size of a very, very small bathroom."
Today, A Prairie Home Companion is heard by over 4 million listeners each week on over 580 public radio stations. Keillor remembers, "When the show started, it was something funny to do with my friends, and then it became an achievement that I hoped would be successful, and now it's a good way of life." To see Garrison Keillor and a Prairie Home Companion Live is an experience to remember. Garrison Keillor and a Prairie Home Companion have many faithful followers nationwide so get your tickets early and see a legendary Minnesota show!
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