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.

Wonderlust Productions co-directors Alan Berks, left, and Leah Cooper are hoping people will look down at their feet so they can see the theater companies Hidden Herald QR stickers around St. Paul. Photographed on Wednesday, July 24, 2024. The local theater company has created 31 short audio plays that can be access by scanning QR codes on large stickers scattered about St. Paul. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

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 underground sewer system, a ghost story at Mears Park, an omniscient Lowertown mural.

“It’s like fictional augmented reality,” Cooper said. “With our audio play and your imagination, you’ll see another layer of possible reality in the spot you’re standing.”

Wonderlust Productions co-directors Alan Berks, left, and Leah Cooper next to one of their Hidden Herald QR stickers near St. Paul’S Union Station on Wednesday, July 24, 2024. The local theater company has created 31 short audio plays called the Hidden Herald that can be listened to by scanning QR codes on large stickers scattered about St. Paul. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Explore the Hidden Herald

There are four ways to interact with Hidden Herald.

First, you can simply stumble upon QR codes on the ground while walking around downtown. Second, you can pay what you can to receive a digital listing of each play’s location. Third, for $25, you can buy a map designed by illustrator Jeff Nelson that includes synopses of each play and lays out walking tours to follow. Fourth, you can explore from home online, regardless of where you live or what accessibility accommodations you need.

The print maps are available for purchase on Wonderlust’s website and can then be picked up in person at Lost Fox or MetroNOME Brewery in Lowertown. (Those are just pickup locations; payment for maps is not accepted in person.)

Berks and Cooper are also hosting a series of events to coincide with Hidden Herald’s opening weekend. Starting at 5 p.m. Saturday, July 27, at MetroNOME, or at 2 p.m Sunday, July 28, at Lost Fox, you can buy discounted print maps and head out for a scavenger hunt to various audio play locations. Completed hunts earn prizes, and playwrights and actors will be there to mingle, too.

Reimagining real life

Wonderlust Productions co-directors Alan Berks, left, and Leah Cooper stand next to one of their Hidden Herald QR stickers near the St. Paul Farmers Market on Wednesday, July 24, 2024. The local theater company has created 31 short audio plays that can be access by scanning QR codes on large stickers scattered about St. Paul. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Hidden Herald, to be clear, is not a historical walking tour of downtown. The stories are creative fiction; there are “no bootlegging gangsters or famous old white dudes,” Cooper joked.

But like all of Wonderlust Productions’ projects, the stories in the series grew out of people’s real life experiences, shared and reimagined to help spark social conversation and change.

Berks and Cooper hold semi-regular “story circles” focused on particular topics — adoption, incarceration, caregiving — where people linked to those communities share their stories and perspectives. Formerly incarcerated people talk to Department of Corrections workers; social workers talk to prison administrators.

Playwrights and other theater-makers then transform these stories into a stage production, which is cast with a mix of professional actors and community members who can reenact different roles in their own stories.

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These stories take on other creative forms, too. Along with a traditional stage production, the adoption project turned into a graphic novel. A project on state governance and activism became a limited-run podcast series in 2023 called “Our House.”

And over the past year, stories from downtown business owners, employees, students, residents, and visitors — infused with a healthy dose of forward-thinking imagination — turned into this inaugural season of Hidden Herald. Wonderlust has already secured funding for a second season of the production, set to debut next summer with a full slate of new stories.

Just by walking around downtown, Cooper said, it’s clear that the area is in the midst of a major transformation.

During the pandemic, as we sat inside with a picture in our minds of what the world outside looked like, that world changed right under our noses, she said.

This can spark some discomfort — and it also means we have an opportunity to rethink our city in big ways, she and Berks said.

“Transitions are fascinating; there’s so much possibility,” Cooper said. “We want to make plays that give people a chance to stand somewhere they thought they knew, and use their imagination to look at what’s possible.”

If You Go

What: Launch events for Hidden Herald, a series of downtown audio plays

When and where: 5 p.m. Saturday, July 27, at MetroNOME (385 Broadway St.) or at 2 p.m. Sunday, July 28, at Lost Fox (213 E. 4th St.)

Activities include: Scavenger hunts around downtown inspired by stories in the Hidden Herald series, prizes and a chance to meet playwrights and actors

Cost: Maps with walking tours of the whole series are discounted for $15 at the launch events; regularly $25

More info: wlproductions.org/hidden-herald/

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