If you’ve felt a general lack of good vibes lately between Minneapolis city officials, there was an improv comedy show you missed Tuesday night in Uptown.
The Theater of Public Policy, performed before a delighted audience at the Granada Theater, featured Mayor Jacob Frey and City Council president Elliott Payne (Ward 1) in an in-depth, nuanced and even cordial discussion about thorny city issues like affordable housing and Minneapolis’ next police chief.
The conceit of T2P2 (see what they did there?) is that the interview, moderated by cofounder and man about town Tane Danger, occasionally breaks for rapidfire, and sometimes deranged, improv skits based on the conversation.
It’s a balancing act, one that is made all the more fascinating by the fact that Danger wasn’t simply tossing softballs to his guests. The first question was about the realities of hiring the city’s next police chief, with Frey and Payne discussing their mixed feelings about former chief Brian O’Hara’s tenure.
Frey called O’Hara “in many ways a great chief,” but said his reported interference with an investigation was unacceptable. Frey hopes, he said, to have someone new in the role within a few months.
More enlightening were conversations about property tax values and affordable housing. While Frey and Payne found agreement on the use of tax increment financing and innovative public housing models, Danger pushed them on their differences. Payne called for bigger swings and stronger government involvement, while Frey questioned if the most good might come from simply putting that energy into the city’s existing public housing programs.
Payne said repeatedly, too, that he wanted clarity and consistency on whether the city would adopt a capitalist approach to development policies or lean toward stronger government intervention.
“Or,” he asked, adopting the tone one might use to tell a ghost story around a campfire, “are we socialists?”
The improv scenes were usually, if tangentially, related to the discussion. A Payne comment about playing “fast and loose” with TIF money became a dinner party where a guest named Tif attempted to draw her hosts into a polyamorous relationship. And a discussion about the future of Uptown businesses led to a bizarre song about the joys of clipping your toenails in public.
Extremely specific references had the audience roaring, including a nod to the late great Rudolph’s Bar-B-Que. And the night’s biggest laugh came at the expense of dispensaries: “We cannot prop up Uptown on weed alone,” a performer exclaimed.
More than anything, the event showcased that city officials can have these discussions. Payne noted that he actually appreciates his relationship with the mayor, but that it’s often made to look negative through the hyperfocused and magnified lens of social media and news coverage.
Frey scored some laughs, too, ribbing Payne for the latter’s extended and passionate diatribe about Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and how it had poisoned discourse across all levels of government.
“If you’re wondering what it’s like to have a meeting with Elliott Payne,” Frey said, “this is a huge percentage of it.”
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