"Family Dinner" at the Dudley Riggs Theatre

My favorite improv show is back! Improvisor Molly Ritchie started Family Dinner, a two-act improvised play about, you guessed it, a family gathering for a holiday* dinner, about 20 years ago. The show eventually landed at HUGE Theater where it played to sold-out houses for 13 years until HUGE sadly closed its doors last year. But it has found a new home at the Dudley Riggs Theatre, the home of Brave New Workshop and part of the Hennepin Arts group of theaters. It's been playing every Friday and Saturday since November 7, and will continue through the end of December (that means just four more shows!). It's become a sort of tradition for the Twin Cities Theater Bloggers to gather for our own TCTB family dinner, and then watch a performance of the most hilariously awkward Family Dinner you'll (hopefully) ever experience. I joined my friends from Beyond the Curtains, Minnesota Theater Love, Play Off the Page, The Stages of MN, and Twin Cities Stages for a fun evening of dinner (at Crave right across the street) and comedy on Hennepin Avenue.

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2025: "DOLLY WHO?'S HOLIDAY HORROR SHOW"

Day: 4

Show: 12

Title: DOLLY WHO?'S HOLIDAY HORROR SHOW

Category: Comedy / Dance / Horror / Improv / Original Music / Puppetry / Sci-fi / Solo Show / Storytelling / Audience participation / Kid friendly / LGBTQIA+ Content

By: Destiny Davison

Created by: Dolly Who? Productions

Location: Open Eye Theatre

Summary: A solo show combining comedy, improv, and illustration to celebrate a holiday.

Highlights: I've seen Destiny Davison in several improv shows, but never as her "Dolly Who?" persona. And she's a delight. Sweet and silly, with a unique use of her illustrations, both in the form of cute little stick puppets and illustrations that she does live. The theme of this show is "holiday horror," and she shares her love of horror movies and holidays of all kinds! The show is participatory in a non-threatening way, and she asks for our help in designing a new holiday (at the show I attended - the very appropriate "Moderately Clean Air Day"). We even help her decorate and design a new mascot, and one (un)lucky audience member gets to enjoy some holiday candy. Destiny/Dolly is really great at interacting with and reacting to the audience. In the horror portion of the show, she talks about the real-life things that are way scarier than any horror movie, which I guess is what attracts people to them. But this show is not scary; it feels comforting and familiar and communal.

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.

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2022: "The Hysterical Woman"

Day: 6

Show: 19

Title: The Hysterical Woman

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

By: Fortune's Fool Theatre

Created by: Ariel Pinkerton

Location: Rarig Center Xperimental

Summary: A collection of new and classic stories, news pieces, and poems around the idea of the historical and continuing diagnosis/accusation of "hysteria" in women.

Highlights: This powerful and moving collection includes pieces written by cast members, female writers like Mary Oliver and Emily Dickenson, and moments in history. Performed by a five-person ensemble (Ariel Pinkerton, Linda Sue Anderson, Rachel Flynn, Destiny Davison, and Andrew Troth), each piece is a little story unto itself, some funny, some tragic, all relatable. Stories about women at the doctor's office, or a conversation with her partner, or with a coworker. And when the interaction goes well and the woman is listened to and heard, the cast interrupts with "this never happens" and provides informative background about gaslighting, sexual harassment, or medical misdiagnoses. Which is funny because it's true, and we begin to expect it. Particularly impactful is the reading of Anita Hill's testimony at the 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearings, and a mash up of the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" with Britney Spears's recent testimony to end her conservatorship. The staging (direction by Nicole Wilder) makes good use of the Xperimental space, and the individual pieces flow smoothly from one to the next, comprising a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. This piece illustrates the fact that the more things change, the more they stay the same. We still call women "hysterical" when we don't like what they're saying or doing, if not in so many words. 

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

"You Who I Always/Never/Once Loved" by Fortune's Fool Theatre at the Crane Theater

Last fall, Fortune's Fool Theatre presented a beautiful collection of storytelling pieces by local artists around the topic of having or not having children. They did it as safely as possible, but since the pandemic was still raging I watched the video recordings of To Breed, Or Not to Breed at home. Their follow-up this fall is stories about love in all forms, and since I'm comfortable going to see theater in a vaxxed and masked audience (as most are these days), I was happy to see the first weekend of You Who I Always/Never/Once Loved at the Crane Theater, which is another collection of beautifully honest stories. Performances continue through this Saturday, with another set of storyteller and stories next weekend (click here for details). After the run, they will also make the video recordings available to view online.