Originally, Sabrín Diehl wanted “Latins on Ice” to be performed at Powderhorn Park. “I really felt we had to do it at Powderhorn Park,” Diehl said.
But The Great Northern and the U.S. Pond Hockey Championship at Lake Nokomis had the infrastructure necessary for an outdoor performance including power, heating houses, and porta potties.
Diehl knew the importance of infrastructure from prior experiences and advice from their mentors. “If you have a spot where there is already infrastructure, it’s better to go there,” they said.
Even though Diehl had instinctual doubts about performing alongside a hockey event, they “decided to listen to my elders and do it.” “Latins on Ice” was performed twice on Saturday before it moved to Powderhorn Park on Sunday.
“If we had only done it at Powderhorn, it would have stayed in a vacuum,” Diehl said. “I want everyone to see my work.”
Yet, a momentary crisis drew them back. In an Instagram video posted Sunday morning they announced, ”We are now possibly going to do [the performance] at Powderhorn where there are more families who are Latinx.”
Last weekend, “Latins on Ice” had three performances scheduled in partnership with the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships and The Great Northern. At 6:30 a.m. on Sunday, the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships contacted The Great Northern and told them “Latins on Ice” was not allowed to perform on Sunday at the U.S. Pond Hockey Championship because the show was “not family friendly.” The Great Northern assisted “Latins on Ice” in finding another location for Sunday’s performance. If the U.S. Pond Hockey Championship had concerns about the show’s content, they were not made known until after Saturday’s performances.
“You know what isn’t family friendly?” Diehl rhetorically asked me over the phone Sunday night. “ICE. Kids in cages at the border.”
“Latins on Ice” was a show about the cultural clash of active Minnesotans in the winter and Latinx people moving here from warmer climates. A lot of the show focused on grappling with why people in Minnesota enjoy being outside in the cold. The show included swear words and what Diehl described as “Three Stooges-style” comedy and physicality. A picture of Mayor Jacob Frey taped to a clipboard was “beat up” during the show.
According to Diehl, U.S. Pond Hockey had not asked to see a script or a runthrough of the show prior to the performances. The performers with “Latins on Ice” tried to contact the organization for a month, in hopes of getting a dress rehearsal. “We needed a tech run on the ice because we were dealing with a huge technical part of the show. The sound was the biggest part,” Diehl explained. “We were not given a sound check the day before. We were only given an hour to set up. The generator that they allowed us to use ran out of power before the first show even started.”
The Great Northern also reached out to U.S. Pond Hockey Championship President Jody Delorit for a month without a response. “[U.S. Pond Hockey Championship] were not in communication with us,” Diehl said. “They didn’t host us in the way they should have.”
The “Latins on Ice” set included an ABOLISH I.C.E. banner which audience member, Jeff, referred to as “just good punwork.” Jeff, a St. Paul resident, visited Lake Nokomis to watch the performance. As the cast was breaking down their set after Saturday’s performances, U.S. Pond Hockey Championship Commissioner Jim Dahline, came up to the set, pointed at the banner and, according to Diehl, said, “You need to take that down right now, you need to take it down immediately.”
Dahline then stood there and watched the cast finish breaking down the set until the banner was down.
Trying to grasp why Dahline was so upset, Diehl posited it was the nature of the banner, “which I guess is political, but the political is personal. Our families are getting deported everyday,” Diehl said.
Even though “Latins on Ice” was a Great Northern performance, U.S. Pond Hockey had veto power. "It’s their hockey event, so it’s their event and it’s their rink,” Diehl said. “And if they don’t like something, they get to say we don’t want this because they have to care for their audience. Which is a lot of white people. There were people at the event who loved us.”
The unique intersection of Minnesota hockey culture and community theater was not lost on the audience. Some audience members initially appreciated the coming together of community art and hockey. “How great that there's something for us art lovers to enjoy alongside the hockey lovers enjoying their game,” Susan Maas, from Nokomis East, said, who attended the performance through a friend’s invitation.
“I was surprised to see something so honest at a venue like the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships,” Jeff said after the performance. “Seeing something so affably silly that was also frank and critical about the history and power dynamics in our city actually, really raised my opinion of the whole event, until they changed their minds.”
On Saturday there was a mix of people wandering over from the hockey event and people who came to see “Latins on Ice.”
“The performers were simply honest about their experiences and perceptions,” Maas said. “And that was probably too much for some white Minnesotans.”
At the time of publishing, U.S. Pond Hockey Championships have not released a statement nor returned messages to comment, so it’s not clear what aspects of the show they deemed “not family friendly.”
“It made me think better of this very well-funded event, that they were big enough to provide a platform to a group this,” Jeff said. “And after kicking them out, I think it makes the whole organization look really brittle, [in that] the Championship couldn't withstand this goofy comedy troupe making some light, social satire…Like who is this goofy theatre troupe with their cardboard props really hurting?”
Diehl’s performance in “Latins on Ice” turned out to be quite the finale. They moved to New York City today. Four years ago they moved here to attend Guthrie’s acting program. Prior, they lived in Miami and attended the New World School of the Arts as a high schooler. “Being an artist in this town, to only survive on art, feels really hard,” Diehl said.
Diehl doesn’t want to be “seen as an identity before an artist,” but the racial dynamics embedded in “Latins on Ice” and the responses to the performances are obvious. Speaking on being an artist of color in Minneapolis they reflected, “there is not enough reward to do work here.”
I asked them if the dynamic with the U.S. Pond Hockey Championship gave them any clarity about moving to New York City. “This is exactly why I am leaving. Because of shit like this. This is exactly why,” Diehl said in response.
The Great Northern released this statement on Tuesday afternoon:
“We deeply regret the recent difficulties created for two of our partners. The decision to host Latins on Ice at the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships was made with the best of intentions, and all involved entered into the partnership excited by the idea of sharing a bold, honest, and heartfelt perspective on winter.
The Great Northern failed to align expectations and fell short in facilitating the clear communication that’s critical to ensuring all who participated felt valued and heard. We are committed to learning from this misstep as we work alongside our many talented collaborators over the remaining days of this year’s festival and beyond.”
