Minnesota Fringe Festival 2026: "BE NOT AFRAID"

Day: 6

Show: 19

Title: BE NOT AFRAID

Category: Comedy / Drama / Horror / Mystery / Original Music / Physical Theater / Storytelling

By: Third Space Theater

Created by: Mariabella Sorini & Alex Church

Location: Southern Theatre

Summary: A struggling North Dakota farm family is threatened by the construction of nearby oil rigs, as they're visited by angels and devils.

Highlights: This is the only dramatic play I've seen at Fringe so far, and feels much more like a one-act play than a Fringe show, not surprising for Third Space Theater. It's an original play written by Mariabella Sorini (who also stars in it) and Alex Church (who also directs, with Stephanie Kahle), and everything about is thoughtful and polished and gorgeous. The story is centered around Micah (Mariabella) and Jordan (Ben Qualley), living on and trying to save his father's farm despite the nearby fracking and the usual environmental issues. Jordan's cousin and his friend are crashing on air mattresses in their living room, Peter (Logan Lang) trying to work and make money for his daughter, Mason (Sebastian Grim) only out for momentary "fun." Neighbor Sam (Tamira Rashid) is desperate after her horses are lost, and beset by strange occurrences that are killing livestock. There's a sense of familiarity among this group of people, like they've known each other forever and we're just getting a peek into their lives. Once Micah is visited by a scary angel (Em Adam Rosenberg) she starts to prepare for a fire and/or some other catastrophe, removing pesticides and gas for the generator despite Jordan's insistence that they're needed. The catastrophe does eventually come, and it tests everyone. The Southern is the perfect backdrop for this story, with its weathered brick walls full of history. A couple of ladders, sawhorses, wooden poles, and lines of laundry hung between them create the stark farm landscape. Lighting changes from full blackout to a red glow to bright lights, and the sound design is haunting, with music and effects. All of this helps to tell this earthy and otherworldly story about a community, the land, and the dangers of industrialization. The movement and physical theater pieces are beautiful, particularly the silent wounded deer (embodies by Mary Lofreddo), perhaps representing our wounded earth. This is definitely one of the most polished and professional shows you'll see at Fringe.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here. 

"Plano" by Third Space Theater at Mixed Blood Theatre

Third Space Theater made an impressive debut at least year's Minnesota Fringe Festival with the original play Breach, a gripping tale at sea that was part psychological thriller and part family drama. It makes sense, then, that for their post-Fringe debut they chose playwright and screenwriter Will Arbery's surreal family drama Plano. This regional premiere plays at Mixed Blood Theatre through January 18, and it's an engrossing, fast-paced, fantastical, funny, devastating play. Co-directors Alex Church and Em Adam Rosenberg have assembled a fantastic cast, including several of the Breach crew, and did a great job with this tricky script. The play deals with themes of domestic violence, so Third Space has partnered with the local organization Tubman, that offers support to people experiencing this and other traumas. They're donating 10% of ticket sales to the organization, and have information in the lobby. The night I attended, after a horrifying week of ICE terrorizing our community, they also had helpful packets of info about dealing with ICE (with whistles). This new theater company is already proving to be one that not only does great, interesting, entertaining work, but also engages with the community and world around them. Their name, which derives from the theory of a third space, in addition to home and work, for people to gather in community, seems entirely appropriate.

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2025: "Breach"

Day: 6

Show: 19

Title: Breach

Category: Comedy / Drama / Original Music / Physical Theater / Puppetry

By: Third Space Theater

Written by: Mariabella Sorini and Alex Church

Location: Theatre in the Round

Summary: On board a fishing vessel searching for crabs in the Bering Sea, a storm, family drama, and possibly mutiny wreak havoc.

Highlights: This is a thoroughly gripping story told in an hour that flies by and also somehow feels like an epic journey. It's well written with natural sounding dialogue, creating interesting and complex characters and setting up mysteries that pay off later in the show. Siblings Lennox (Stephanie Kahle) and Monroe (Em Adam Rosenberg) inherited the ship from their father, the former named Captain even though the latter is better at it. They and the rest of the crew (Isabel Estelle, Hannah Leatherbarrow, Mary Lofreddo, and Mariabella Sorini, great performances by all) perform the functions of their job (including gutting fish represented by water bottles), talk and joke, and have a wild night of drinking during a lightning storm. But things keep going wrong, and the tension builds in a wonderfully suspenseful way. Director Alex Church makes great use of the in-the-round space, with the cast climbing up and down the stairs, using various parts of the space as different parts of the ship. The lighting is spectacular, from bring lightning flashes to total darkness lit by flashlights. It's an immersive, visceral experience that makes you feel like you're on this doomed ship, and that's not a comfortable feeling. Simple but effective props and costumes, the occasional singing of sea shanties, beautiful movement to represent the waves and water, and one amazing crab puppet complete the experience.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here. 

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2023: "Primary"

Day: 9

Show: 34

Title: Primary

Category: COMEDY / DRAMA / LGBTQIA+ CONTENT / POLITICAL CONTENT

By: Alex Church

Created by: Alex Church

Location: Augsburg Studio

Summary: A longtime Congresswoman loses her primary election and her family all in one day.

Highlights: This show is donating part of their profits to Women Winning, an organization dedicated to helping pro-choice women get elected to positions at all levels, but the story itself does not make a convincing case for anyone to run for elected office. Elizabeth Young has sacrificed everything for her political career, and has the accomplishments to show for it. But when her adopted daughter Anna comes out as gay during the campaign, and she's dating a political reporter, it brings all of the issues bubbling just under the surface out into the open. Elizabeth's marriage is in trouble, and her daughter wants nothing to do with her. Adding fuel to the fire, Elizabeth's seemingly racist but actually supportive mother left the crumbling house Elizabeth's father built to Anna, and the two disagree about what to do with it. The political gets very personal in this drama, coming to an explosive conclusion. The show is well acted (including an unforeseen appearance by the playwright as Elizabeth, which, not having read the program closely, took me a minute to realize), with a recorded video of a clever spoof of a political ad opening the show, and gets into some real thorny awkward discussions between various characters (Anna is having some relationship issues too). Like I said, not the best ad for running for office, but good theater.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

"Othello: The Remix" by Minneapolis Musical Theatre at the Phoenix Theater

On William Shakespeare's presumed birthday, I saw perhaps the most original retelling of one of his plays that I've ever seen. Othello: The Remix was created by the Q Brothers, who in 2021 partnered with Theater Latte Da on their "Ghostlight Series" of virtual cabarets for an original series of short music-theater pieces called "The Rap Pack." Their rap and hip-hop retelling of one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies (developed with Rick Boynton) traveled the world and went all the way to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London. No one better than Minneapolis Musical Theatre to bring us the area premiere of this ingenious work, the 48th area premiere for this company that specializes in "rare musicals, well done." It's clever and fast and well-cast, and I think the Bard would be pleased to know that his work is still being interpreted and speaks to people living in a much different world than he did (that's really not all that different at heart). Like they say in the show "good storytellers borrow, great ones steal" and the creators of this show stole from the best to make something unique and original. You can see it at the Phoenix Theater now through May 7 only.

"Bent" by The BAND Group at the Phoenix Theater

Partnering with OutFront Minnesota, The BAND Group is bringing us the 1979 play Bent about the imprisonment and murder of gay people in Nazi Germany. A look at the daily news should tell you that those days are not as long ago and far away as they may seem, with increasing violence and discrimination against the LGBTQ community. One of OutFront's current campaigns is to end conversion therapy, which is still legal in Minnesota. You can find more information about this and sign the petition here. And you can see The BAND Group's powerful and sobering production of Bent at the Phoenix Theater in Uptown through this weekend only.