Reading of "John Proctor is the Villain" by Table/Read at Aster House

I attended the inaugural Table/Read event last August, #TCTheater artist Grant Sorenson's new series in which a group of talented local actors read a play. The fun part is - the play is not announced until literally seconds before the reading begins. Grant has chosen plays that we have not seen here in the Twin Cities before, so it's a great way to be exposed to new plays that may not be produced here, at least anytime soon. And it's so rare that I go to the theater not knowing anything about what I'm about to see, even the title, that it's a fun surprise. Table/Read happens monthly, but I'm so busy during the theater season that I typically need my Monday nights off, so I haven't been able to go back until this month, when things are still a little quiet as we come back from holiday break. I picked a good night to attend Table/Read; the play was the buzzy recent Tony-nominated play John Proctor is the Villain by Kimberly Belflower, soon to be adapted into a film. Visit Table/Read's website or follow them on social media for news of February's event. And don't miss Grant directing the first #TCTheater professional production of Oscar Wilde's Salomé in February.

"Sixpack" at Jungle Theater

I'm not really a sports person (with the exception of my Minnesota Twins), but sports is a great metaphor for life, and a great framework to build a play around. Mixed Blood Theatre has done a couple of great ones - Colossal about football, and Safe at Home about baseball in a site-specific production at CHS Field (home of the Twins' Triple-A affiliate team the St. Paul Saints). Even more relevant to this discussion, Jungle Theater has done two productions of The Wolves, about a high school girls' soccer team, and last year Penumbra Theatre staged FLEX, about a high school girls' basketball team. With the growing attention on girls' and women's sports, it's a great time to debut another play in this genre - Katie Ka Vang's Sixpack. Drawing from her own history and culture, Sixpack features a group of Hmong women who play volleyball together (and sometimes against each other). But as with all of these plays, it's not really about volleyball, it's about friendship, mother-daughter relationships, and community. See this funny, real, and ultimately heart-warming world premiere play at Jungle Theater through June 29.

"The Messenger" at Six Points Theater

I don't know when Six Points Theater decided to produce the new play The Messenger by Playwrights' Center affiliated writer Jenny Connell Davis as part of their 30th season, but it really could not come at a better or more relevant time. But let's face it, anti-Semitism has never gone away, racism has never gone away, hate has never gone away. It feels like as long as there are humans on this planet, this story will be relevant. The inter-related stories of four women are woven together in this riveting 80-minute play, centered around the true story of Holocaust survivor Georgia Gabor, who faced anti-Semitism as an 8th grade math teacher a wealthy community in California in the '80s and '90s, simply because she told her story. She believed that she survived, escaping from the Nazis three times, in order to share her story, to be a messenger. She died in 1994, but she continues to be a messenger through this wonderful and moving play, and thanks to Six Points for bringing us this message that we have to be vigilant, we have to stand up for injustices big and small wherever we see them, because it absolutely could happen here. Go see The Messenger at Six Points Theater's Highland Park space through March 23 only.

"The Buddha Prince" by TigerLion Arts at Wasburn Fair Oaks Park

If you've been reading Cherry and Spoon for a while, you might know that Nature, the outdoor walking play about the life, work, and friendship of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, is one of my favorite theater experiences of all time. But what you may not know, and what I didn't know either, is that Nature was not TigerLion Arts' first foray into ambulatory theater. Back in the early aughts, Nature co-creators Markell Kiefer and Tyson Forbes (along with Samuel Elmore) developed The Buddha Prince with Tibetan-American artist Tenzin Ngawang. After performing multiple times around the country, the piece was shelved while Nature was developed and toured for the next decade. Now they're bringing it back for the first time in 14 years. I said on the Twin Cities Theater Bloggers' podcast Twin Cities Theater Chat that if The Buddha Prince was half as good as Nature, it would be a wonderful experience. I'm happy to report that it is as lovely and unique an experience as Nature, with many of the same themes and even structure, just with a different focus. A co-production with the Tibetan American Foundation of Minnesota, The Buddha Prince is a celebration of the life and work of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, as well as Tibetan culture, music, history, and dance.