Pages

Monday, August 7, 2023

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2023: "Stabby Stab Stab"

Day:
 4

Show: 18


Category: DRAMA / HORROR / ORIGINAL MUSIC / HISTORICAL CONTENT

By: Special When Lit and The Winding Sheet Outfit

Written by: Nissa Nordland Morgan

Location: Crane Theater Studio

Summary: A retelling of the true story of two Wisconsin tweens, obsessed with the story of Slender Man, who stabbed one of their classmates 16 times.

Highlights: This first ever co-production between the artists who brought us the wild and wacky Colonel Sanders story Finger Lickin' Good and the beautifully haunting Årsgång: What You Follow Follows You at last year's Fringe debuted at the Twin Cities Horror Festival last fall (it's like a mini genre specific Fringe Festival). They're remounting it as an independently produced show at the Crane Theater, with shows every night at 8:30 or 10:00. It's an easy 5-10 minute drive from the main hub of the festival, so I recommend stopping by at the end of one of your days. You will be rewarded by a dark and creepy, yet sad and lovely tale. Written by SWL's Nissa Nordland and directed by TWSO's Amber Bjork, it really is the perfect blend of the former company's wild sense of fun and the latter's meticulous and thoughtful attention to detail. Nissa and Kayla Dvorak Feld play the two girls, both so believable and somehow empathetic despite their horrible deeds. Like TWSO always does, Stabby Stab Stab explores the human side of the splashy headline, and posits a theory for how this childhood friendship went so terribly wrong. With a live soundscape created by Derek Lee Miller and Sam Landman, beautifully designed (by Amber) projections of text and images, and cute and creepy props that fill a child's bedroom, this show effectively tells this true story with a thorough, thoughtful, and consistent tone of creepiness, tragedy, and humanness. It's performed in the Crane's smaller studio space (making it a sellout risk), which only makes it more intense and intimate.