Minnesota Fringe Festival 2025: "OPERA PUNKS"

Day: 3

Show: 9

Title: OPERA PUNKS

Category: Comedy / Improv / Musical Theater / Opera / Physical Theater

By: Kelly Shuda

Directed by: Kelly Shuda

Location: Southern Theater

Summary: Non-narrative musical improv.

Highlights: Non-narrative meaning instead of creating one cohesive story (like, say, the Shrieking Harpies), they create a bunch of short individual songs that may have some relation to the others but not clearly. In other words, it's just like a regular improv show, except that every word is sung, which makes it so much more impressive! Music director Kelly Shuda plays a wide variety of music, from opera to metal and everything in between, and this talented cast (Alsa Bruno, Isabella Dunsieth, Julia Weiss, Michael Rogers, and Nora Nelson) just goes with it, making up a new song that suits the musical style. They take a few suggestions from the audience, but it mostly just comes out of their weird and creative minds. They harmonize together very well both musically and improvisationally. I'm not even going to tell you about the songs I heard because they're so brilliantly bizarre, and you'll hear something totally different but just as bizarre! This show is pure entertainment, and this troupe (including Kelly who plays keyboard, guitar, and other instruments so enthusiastically) is so much fun to watch.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here. 

Improv at the Jungle: "Off-Book"

With the recent closure of HUGE Theater, your Uptown home for improv for 15 years, local improv troupes and shows are needing to find new venues at which to perform. Jungle Theater, just blocks away from HUGE, has stepped up to be one of those venues. They have a new series called "Improv at the Jungle," with a group called The Neighborhood performing regularly, as well as a show called Off-Book, hosted and co-directed by Sean Dillon and Isabella Dunsieth. I saw the latter this week and I just may have a new favorite improv show! Keep reading for why, and make plans to see their next performance on March 3. Visit the Jungle website for info and tickets to all of their improv shows. You can also see improv at Strike Theater in Northeast Minneapolis, The Hive Collaborative in St. Paul, Brave New Workshop (which hosted the long-running show Family Dinner in December), and other locations around town. Visit this website for a list of improv events in the Twin Cities.

Blackout Presents: Juneteenth at the Ordway

This week I attended my first celebration of Juneteenth National Independance Day, a holiday long celebrated but only recently made a federal holiday, commemorating the end of slavery in the US. And I can think of no better way to celebrate than with Blackout Improv. Blackout has been performing at various venues around town since 2015, and was the first Black improv troupe in Minneapolis. There are more now, many of which perform at the annual Black and Funny Improv Festival which they started, bringing in BIPOC improv performers from all over the country (and Canada!) to perform at HUGE Theater. I've seen Blackout perform a number of times over the years, and they're always "funny, smart, relevant, and topical" (as I wrote one of the first times I saw them). This was the biggest venue in which I've ever seen them perform, the Ordway's gorgeous Concert Hall, and it was a thrill to see them in front of a large and supportive audience in what felt like a usual Blackout show, but also elevated and special.

Black and Funny Improv Festival at HUGE Theater

The 8th Annual Black and Funny Improv Festival is running this weekend only! I attended the first night and saw four improv groups perform. Not only was it a fun night of laughter (which is the norm at HUGE Theater), but it was a wonderful celebration of Black artists, Black comedy, and Black joy. The festival stresses that "Black people are centered, all are welcome," and it truly felt like that. As a White person, I felt not only welcome, but also privileged to experience and be part of this wonderful community. Laughter is healing and uniting, it builds community and companionship, it makes us forget any perceived differences we think exist between us and others. So head on down to HUGE Theater in Uptown to see some great improv by local, national, and international performers, and/or partake in comedy workshops. You can purchase tickets and find more information about the performers and workshops at the Black and Funny website. And to learn a little more about the festival, listen to our interview with festival co-directors John Gebretatose and Jada Pulley on the Twin Cities Theater Chat podcast.

Black and Funny / Twin Cities Improv Festival at the Bakken Museum

Last weekend, I attended the final performance of the joint festival by the Black and Funny and Twin Cities Improv Festivals. And it only made me wish I had seen more of the performances. In the before times, I didn't see improv often enough, but I had to go to Huge Theater (which was a sponsor of the event) at least once a year to see my favorite improv show, Family Dinner. It had been a year and a half since I had seen live in-person improv, and it was so amazingly wonderful to laugh with other humans at silly, smart, fun performances made up entirely new right in front of us! That's the magic of improv, doable over Zoom but so much better in real life, even outdoors* under a tent on a rainy day. The festival may be over, but live performance returns to Huge on July 9 with shows every Friday and Saturday throughout the summer, and their full schedule returning this fall (click here for details).

"Nacirema: Stories of Color" at nimbus theatre

"I don't see race. People tell me I'm white and I believe them because (insert hilarious quip here)." This is one of my favorite Colbert Report bits, because it shows just how ridiculous it is to claim to be color-blind. We're not color-blind and we shouldn't be, we should see and celebrate all our beautiful colors, despite the difficulties that may come along with it. nimbus theatre's new original work Nacirema (American spelled backwards) explores this and other ideas about race in America. Presented as a series of vignettes written by nimbus' Artistic Directors Josh Cragun and Liz Neerland, along with the seven-person ensemble, it's a modern, thoughtful, innovative, and entertaining take on the issue.

This seven-person cast (consisting of Ernest Briggs, Alsa Bruno, Suzie Cheng, Nastacia Nicole Foster, Dana Lee Thompson, Jesse Villarreal, and Simone Williams), most of whom were unfamiliar to me, all do a wonderful job bringing their unique perspectives and talent to the piece. On a mostly bare stage with a screen to display images or video, with large panels occasionally covering it to provide the backdrop (scenic and video design by Josh Cragun), a dozen or two short scenes played out. Some are funny, some poignant, some a bit shocking, all raw and true. My favorites include:

• The show begins with the cast visiting Nacirema Travel Agency, illustrating the mostly horrible ways people ended up in this country.
• A spoof of local news shows us how skewed it can be, with hilariously sing-songy voices by Ernest and Simone, and stories featuring homicide, sports, and weather.
• A QVC sale of the "token friend of color" is funny and dead on and might make you squirm a little.
• A scene on a bus with few words spoken shows us what's really going on inside people's heads as characters hold up signs that display their thoughts. It's quite telling, moving, and disturbing.
• In some of the most beautiful scenes, each of the seven ensemble members describes her or himself in terms of food, which I assume they had at least a part in writing. These monologues are all lovely, diverse, and poetic, like spoken word performances.
• What starts out as a fun dance party with Alsa calling movements and the cast performing them turns into a sobering police encounter.
• Alsa's painting show (think Bob Ross painting a crack house) is really funny, playful, and surprisingly poignant.
• Dana and Nastacia embrace and celebrate beautiful natural hair!
• The cast stands at the front of the stage and takes turns saying some of the stupid and insensitive things people say.
• A lovely song by Dana and the cast ends the show, with beautifully diverse images of famous Americans displayed on the screen.

I'm a little late to this party - nimbus theatre's Nacirema closes this Sunday. But if you have time this weekend, I recommend checking it out for some entertaining, thought-provoking, challenging, creative theater.

the cast of Nacirema