"Flip the Script: The Great Divide IV" an audio play series by Pillsbury House Theatre

"During the 2016 presidential election, the American political landscape ruptured into one of the most heated divides in recent history. In response, Pillsbury House Theatre began The Great Divide project, commissioning five new ten-minute plays each year tackling the rising political tensions in America. As we head towards the 2020 election, on the heels of a pandemic and a global uprising, that divide has grown even larger. For the fourth and final installment of The Great Divide, Pillsbury House Theatre has invited five former Great Divide playwrights to write a companion piece to their earlier work that imagines a way to move forward, beyond the divide. By pairing playwrights' earlier work with pieces written in this election year, Flip the Script is a powerful examination of the past, present, and future of our political divide."

"West of Central" at Pillsbury House Theatre

A thrilling mystery in the classic noir style set in LA in the '60s sounds fun, but add in the fact that the smart and savvy detective is an African American woman and the play deals with issues of racism, segregation, riots, and changing neighborhoods, and you have a uniquely engaging and thought-provoking new play that only favorite #TCTheater playwright Christina Ham could write. West of Central was developed at the Playwright's Center, where I saw a reading two years ago as part of their Playlabs Festival. It was great then, and it's even better now after some tweaking and fully staged at Pillsbury House Theatre with precise design. Directed by Haley Finn (who also directed the PWC reading) and featuring a fantastic cast of local faves, West of Central is not just super cool and fun, but also has some interesting things to say about race relations then and now, as well as how we choose to live where we live and where we call home.

"The Great Divide II: Plays on the Politics of Truth" at Pillsbury House Theatre

Last year, just a few months into this divisive presidency, Pillsbury House Theatre presented a series of short plays commissioned from local playwrights titled The Great Divide: Plays for a Broken Nation. Utilizing art not to judge or blame, but to explore where we are at this present moment, how we got here, and how we can move forward. One year later, it feels like we're more divisive than ever (although not without a few glimmers of hope), and Pillsbury House has yet again commissioned five short plays, this time under the title The Great Divide II: Plays on the Politics of Truth. They asked the playwrights, "What does truth have to do with our us vs. them mentalities? What is the difference between fact and truth anyway, and does it matter? What happens when our firmly embedded emotions become facts?" The result is five very different and very thoughtful plays, all dealing in some (more or less obvious) way with truth.

"The Great Divide" at Pillsbury House Theatre

Tension. Authentic. Provocative. Humorous. Hope. Uncomfortable. Despair. Familiar. These were some one-word audience reactions to the performance of Pillsbury House Theatre's collection of new short plays last night, titled The Great Divide: Plays for a Broken Nation. I think we're all aware that the world is not the same as it was a year ago, or even six months ago. Theater is a great way to explore the issues that we're all grappling with, to understand them, to process them, to look for solutions. Pillsbury House jumped right into this by commissioning five local playwrights to write a ten-minute play with the title as their only prompt. The result is a diverse collection of stories and characters that are all of the above things, as well as incredibly relevant, timely, and necessary.

"Nina Simone: Four Women" at Park Square Theatre

Fans of meaningful, relevant, timely theater - rejoice! Last year's smash hit new play with music, Nina Simone: Four Women, is back at Park Square Theatre! The Twin Cities Theater Bloggers chose this show as favorite in two categories: musical performance by an ensemble, and music direction (Sandford Moore). If you didn't see it last year, please don't miss this chance again. And if you did see it last year, you might experience it differently this year as a lot has happened in the past year that makes this show even more important to be seen. I've copied my original review below, but what really struck me this time is the idea of arts as advocacy. Nina Simone made a conscious choice to pivot her career from performing black classical music to mostly rich white audiences, to writing her own songs that spoke to the current black experience, putting her at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement. There's been much debate recently about the role of art and artists in politics and our national conversation, and Nina makes it clear that art was, is, and always will be political. The role of arts in society is to hold up a mirror, tell untold stories, engender empathy with our fellow human beings, and start conversations. Nina did that, and continues to do that through Christina Ham's brilliant new play.

"Playlabs" at the Playwrights' Center

Playlabs. It sounds like a scientific experiment about plays. And it sort of is. While the play-writing process is not as rigorous and clearly defined as the scientific process, there is a process involved in bringing a new play to the stage. The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis is one of the best resources in the country for facilitating that process. Now in their 45th year, they work with 1700 playwrights every year in some capacity. That's a lot of new plays! And while we love our classics, and they're important to keep alive, new works of theater are what keep theater thriving and evolving and moving forward. The 33rd annual Playlabs festival is a week-long celebration of this concept. There are a number of special events during the week, but the focus is on three plays by three playwrights who have the chance to workshop the play with top local talent (actors, directors, and designers) and present two readings to the public. As audience members, this is our chance to be part of the play development process. And it's free! Playlabs ends today, but follow the Playwrights' Center on social media and keep your eye on the "Events" page of their website for more opportunities to see readings of new works, including the upcoming Ruth Easton New Play Series.

"Scapegoat" at Pillsbury House Theatre

The new play Scapegoat by local playwright Christina Ham (whose work can be seen on several stages around the Cities this spring) explores a little known part of American history, the Elaine, Arkansas race riot of 1919, which led to the landmark Supreme Court case Moore v. Dempsey. The full story of events (in which hundreds of black sharecroppers were killed by white mobs in response to their attempts to unionize) is tragic, epic, and complicated. Rather than try to tell the whole story, the play focuses on two sharecropper families, one white and one black, and the unspeakably horrible murder that ties them together. The second act takes place in the present time when two interracial couples from New York visit the area while on vacation and are shocked to discover the history, each of them affected in different ways. Similar to Clybourne Park, Scapegoat looks at a racial conflict of the past from the perspective of that time, and also looking back at it from today in our supposedly post-racial society, showing how much things have changed, and how much they haven't.

"Nina Simone: Four Women" at Park Square Theatre

I know next to nothing about jazz singer and Civil Rights activist Nina Simone (other than the recent controversy about casting for the new biopic). But I do know Regina Marie Williams, Aimee K. Bryant, Thomasina Petrus, and Traci Allen Shannon, the four women starring in the new play based on Nina's song "Four Women." So I knew I was in for a treat and an education with Park Square Theatre's world premiere of Nina Simone: Four Women, written by local playwright Christina Ham and directed by Pillsbury House Theatre's Faye M. Price. I was not wrong on either count. Proving once again that everything I know I learned from theater, I now have a greater understanding of the remarkable and talented woman that was Nina Simone, as well as the importance of her music and her voice in the Civil Rights movement. And watching these particular four women, some of the best voices and actors we have here in the Twin Cities, bring full and complicated life to the Peaches, Auntie, Saffronia, and Sweet Thing of Nina's song, is a treat of the highest order.