Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 77

Sunday April 31983 books movies plays concerts visual arts calendars Minneapolis Tribune In the wings 2G 1G Versatile actor reawakens his audience to the faces and feelings of the famous A St 1 By Peter Vaughan Staff Writer It wouldn't be at all surprising if Warren Bowles woke up one morning and didn't know who he was. He might be Martin Luther King Jr. Paul Robeson, perhaps. Or Jackie Robinson. Even a Japanese soldier.

Though the possibilities were legion during February and March this year, Bowles invariably arose, looked in the mirror and discovered Warren Bowles, actor, and then investigated which of the above guises he was to adopt during the day. A quick glance at his schedule provided him with the essential clues. During one recent two day period, Bowles spent his afternoon rehearsing his roles as a Japanese officer and a lord in the Mixed Blood Theatre production of "Kabuki Spectacle." A few hours later, he donned some makeup and the searing anger of singer Paul Robeson and performed a one-man show before a handful of people in a meeting room at the Minneapolis Star andTribune- Company: The following morning he was wearing No. 42 on the back of a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball uniform and portraying Jackie Robinson for students at Lincoln Fundamental Center in north Minneapolis. Five hours later he was on stage at Northgate Elementary School in Bloomington displaying the dignity and compassion of King.

The busy schedule provides clues to Bowles's identity as well as his activity. He is an accomplished and versatile actor. He is black. He is a hard worker. And he is dedicated to the cause of racial equality espoused by Mixed Blood and represented in the lives of Robeson, Robinson and King.

Bowles, 34, arrived at Mixed Blood six years ago in time for the theater's second season and has been a mainstay in the company ever since. He has savoured its successes, suffered with its failures and feels he has grown as the company has. The trio of one-man shows that he and technician Scott Peters schlep around city and state are a sidelight, but an increasingly importantonetohimandthetheater.lt provides Bowles with valuable experience and helps to support him and the theater during the traditional slow winter season. It is during those months that schools launch Black History programs, and Bowles often finds himself submerged in work while his fellow actors are contemplating the Help Wanted ads. N- i But you won't hear Bowles complain.

"Hard work? Sure it gets tiring but it's nothing compared to what a steelworker has to put in every day of his life," he said during a recent interview in what used to be the second-floor sleeping quarters for the firefighters who once staffed the building that is now the Mixed Blood's West Bank playhouse. If that sounds kind and a bit unlikely from a member of an occupation known for its egocentrics, you don't know Warren Bowles. He is a person who seems to be relaxed all the time. Whether he is ambling after a fly ball in a Bowles 8Q 1 it Actor Warren Bowles: He's a man of many roles. I i ti i.

at ill IsJS' 4 if? 15 I as Jackie Robinson. Warren Bowles as Martin Luther King Jr. as Paul Robeson Gannett plans to keep low profile in making Channel 1 1 the ones to turn to A man was telling me a story at breakfast the other day, a story that poked fun at the quality of the news department at WTCN-TV (Channel VK Two people are walking down the street when a WTCN News truck rushes by. One of them turns to the other and says, "Gee, something must've happened yesterday." What makes the joke interesting is that it was told by one of WTCN's new owners James Sieger, vice president for news at the Gannett Broadcasting Group. Gannett has paid a whopping $75 million to buy the Golden Valley station from Metromedia, and will take control of the station April 13.

Sieger and the Gannett group's president, Jeffrey Davidson, came to Minneapolis from the group's Atlanta headquarters last week to make preparations for the changeover. While they said they don't necessarily subscribe to the joke's view of Ch. 1 1 's newsgathering ability, they seem to already understand where WTCN stands in the minds of Twin Cities' television news viewers. Which is nowhere. WTCN's newscasts hardly draw enough viewers to keep the lights burning at the station.

During the last rating period, the station's 10 p.m. newscast drew an average 1 0 percent of the viewing audience, compared with about 40 percent at the leading stations, KSTP and WCCO. And the station, an NBC affiliate, is one of the few network affiliates in the country to be regularly humiliated by being beaten in the ratings by an independent station (KMSP, in this case). Those dismal ratings are unfortunate because, In truth, the station Isn't that awful. It has some solid people, anchor John Bachman among them, and it has done some fine work in the recent past.

Examples include the special report on herpes done by the station's documentary unit (although the promotional ads that continued to tout the show months after it was broadcast wore a little thin). And there was Susan Wiese's sterling report on the surgical reattachment of a man's leg, complete with film taken through a microscope of the surgery. And some excellent reporting of the PCB spill in the St. Paul school district's food handling facility, reporting that beat the competition. But none of that matters much when nobody's watching.

And that's a fact Nick Coleman Coleman 8G.