 A Finnish theater group has found its way to the Brainerd area to perform on local playwrights one-act play. Clayton Castle caught up with the group members as they prepare for their performance. It's a tale of immigration, opportunity, and history, and it's coming to the Schalberg Theater in Brainerd later this week. The reading room revolves around two immigrants who have found a safe haven in a northern Minnesota library. At that time in Duluth there were still many immigrants from Eastern Europe, Nordic countries, and some of them were homeless people. So they would come and use the reading room as a safe haven during the day, you know, a place to stay warm to be off the street because they really, truly were homeless people. Based off a short story written by Ann Toomey, a former teacher in Pequot Lakes and adjunct professor at CLC, the one-act play The Reading Room is based off Toomey's experiences as a page at the Duluth Public Library in the late 1960s. She recalls meeting the two Finnish men who had become the basis of her play. It's really intrigued with them and I have to say that was probably my first experience with Finnish people like that because my background's not Finnish at all, but I understood, I think I understood immigration a little bit from my own family having come from Ireland. The production is being produced by the Finnish theater group Fiasco, a group with a rich history of successful actors and productions in Finland and around the world. We have been together 37 years. We have had young people in our group and they all have went around the world or in different fields of art and culture. Fiasco's theater director says that it is an honor to perform the work in Minnesota so close to where the story takes place. It is a big, big adventure to come this far and to perform in that place where the actual history is. The Reading Room will be performed at the Schalberg Theater at 7 p.m. on Tuesday night, reporting in Brainerd Clayton Castle, Lakeland News. And that performance tomorrow night is free and open to the public. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.