Minnesota Fringe Festival 2020: "OMG!"

Location: Digital Hub Live

Length: 50 minutes

Title: OMG!

By: Taj Ruler and Emily Schmidt

Summary: A couple of people read actual journal entries from their childhood, followed by improvised scenes related to them.

Highlights: I watched the August 4 episode, with journalers Suzie Juul and Cristi Runpza, and improvisers Rita Boersma, Casey Haeg, Joy Dolo, Sarah TL (per zoom, didn't catch her name). Suzie and Cristi read about the typical childhood drama of boys, secret clubs, and friends on vacation. The improvisers then riffed on those ideas with funny and wacky results. It's horrifying, nostalgic, and hilarious to remember being that young. Each night features a different cast, hosted by Taj and Emily, with future live shows on August 6, 8, and 9 at 7pm. You can also watch all past shows on Emily's YouTube channel, with any donations going to different non-profits.

Read all of my Nightly Fringe mini-reviews here.

Read all of my Digital Hub mini-reviews here.

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2019: "Because I Said So"

Day: 6

Show: 21

Title: Because I Said So

Category: COMEDY / DRAMA / ORIGINAL MUSIC / STORYTELLING

By: Schmidtshow Productions

Created by: Emily Schmidt and Pat Robinson Schmidt

Location: Rarig Center Arena

Summary: Sketches, songs, and stories about the mother/daughter relationship, as told by local funny women and their real-life mothers and/or daughters.

Highlights: Emily Schmidt has written some really funny, clever, Minnesotan comedies for the Fringe (e.g., last year's Lakes 4), but this year she's doing something different. Along with her mother Pat Robinson Schmidt, she's gotten together some of the funniest women in the Twin Cities to talk about their moms and/or daughters. And the result is not just funny and relatable, but also very moving and sometimes serious. The show opens with Samantha Baker Harris singing a sweet little song with her young daughter Maya, and closes with a song by Samantha, Maya, and Samantha's mom Lynn Baker. It's a beautiful full circle moment, and in between are sketches and stories, based in truth, by Shanan Custer and her daughter Kate, Alex Byrne and her mother Maura, Taj Ruler (speaking about her strained relationship with her mother), Laura Zaber and her daughter Irene, Pat (Emily performed at the first couple shows but I assume has gone back to L.A. where she lives and writes), and Lauren Anderson and her mom Jinniece. It's a well curated selection that covers many of the facets of the mother/daughter relationship.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2018: "Lakes 4"

Day: 5

Show: 19

Title: Lakes 4

Category: Comedy

By: Schmidtshow Productions

Written by: Emily Schmidt

Location: Theatre in the Round

Summary: In a play on the movie Oceans 8, half as many women from the land of 10,000 lakes plan a heist: to steal the cherry from the iconic Spoonbridge and Cherry statue.

Highlights: This show wins the prize for most Minnesota references per minute. It's not the Fringe if you don't see at least one show that loving mocks Target, Perkins, traffic, and everything else we love (or hate) about our fair state. Emily Schmidt's clever and funny script delivers on that front, as well as creating a fun and fringey show. Suburban wife and mom Bridget (Samantha Baker Harris, who also directs) feels like she's lost that sense of adventure from her youth, and is bored sitting around the house with husband Dan (David Kappelhoff) all the time, so she decides to pull a heist just to prove that she can. She enlists her friend Grace (Jen Scott), their fitness coach Cheryl (Maureen Tubbs), and her friend Pam (Casey Haeg), an ace LuLaRoe saleswoman. They meet at Perkins to plan the heist, where waiter Jaden (ball of energy Aaron Vanek) overhears them and wants in. Of course the plans go awry, but the point is that Bridget rediscovers her inner spirit and sense of adventure. The cast is fantastic, the jokes are fast and funny, and the star of the show is the Cherry and Spoon. How could I not love it?!

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2018: "Our Best Life"

Day: 2

Show: 5

Title: Our Best Life

Category: Comedy

By: Custer and Schmidt

Created by: Shanan Custer and Emily Schmidt

Location: Rarig Center Thrust

Summary: #TCTheater's favorite funny woman Shanan Custer's accidental first solo show.

Highlights: Funny friends Emily Schmidt and Shanan Custer make a great comedy team; I've seen them several times at Bryant-Lake Bowl and elsewhere. But when Emily, who lives in LA, gets The Job at Netflix, what's a friend to do but go on herself? That's exactly what Shanan did, and she's a natural at entertaining the crowd. She's so smart and funny, and her disarming style makes the audience feel like you're trading stories with a girlfriend who's way funnier than you. Whether covering topics as weighty as Minnesota's complicated history, or as light as what her neighbors are actually posting on NextDoor, she's relatable and insightful and hilarious. Other topics include dissatisfaction with a Starucks menu change (written by Emily), a terrifyingly funny flight, a frustrated Christmas letter, a Carol Burnett-esque "ask me a question" segment, and a final number that is Everything: silly and joyful and fun. Even though some of the sketches may be familiar if you've seen Shanan and/or Emily before, they're still fresh and funny; Shanan delivers them as if for the first time. Shanan Custer is a Minnesota Fringe treasure (she's involved in five shows this year) and you would be silly not to see her as often as you can. Warning: this show will make your face hurt from smiling and laughing for an hour.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

Fringe Festival 2016: "Couple Fight II: Friends and Family"

Day: 6

Show: 28

Title: Couple Fight II: Friends and Family

Category: Comedy

By: Weggel-Reed Productions

Created by: Anna Weggel-Reed

Location: Theatre in the Round

Summary: A return of last year's hilarious Couple Fight, with all new real-life fights between funny people who love each other.

Highlights: This is another simple premise that works. Fringe favorites reenact a real-life fight they had with a loved one - spouse, parent, friend, sister. Created by Anna Weggel-Reed, directed by Tom Reed, and written by the cast, it's the first Fringe show that brought me to tears of laughter. Sisters Angie Martin and Casey Haeg fight about nothing and everything, the way sisters do. Improv buddies Andy Hilbrands and Katy Kessler fight about (what else) the election. Lacey Zeiler fights with her 3-year-old daughter Lila (hilariously played by her husband John Zeiler) about bedtime. Married couple Rachael Davies and Andy Kraft fight about football, and who's more of a man. BFFs Sulia Altenberg and BriAnna M. Daniels fight about race (awkward!). Friends Anna Weggel-Reed and Richie McLarn fight about smoking on the U of M campus. And last but perhaps best, Emily Schmidt and her mother Pat reenact a scene at Target when Emily was a precocious 7-year-old. It's nicely put together with intro and ending scenes that include a snippet of all fights, and each scene is introduced like a boxing match (perfect for the in-the-round setting). And then little Lila shows up for the curtain call and steals the show.

Fringe Festival 2016: "Snow Country"

Day: 2

Show: 7

Title: Snow Country

Category: Comedy

By: Minnehaha Productions

Written by: Carmen Angelica and Emily Schmidt

Location: Theatre in the Round

Summary: A flight from Minneapolis to Lansing on the (fictional but I wish it existed) Snow Country Airlines - "you can travel without leaving home."

Highlights: Madeline (Casey Haeg) needs a new start after her fiance leaves her, so she takes a job as a "comfort consultant" on Snow Country Airlines. We witness her first flight as she meets her new coworkers - flight attendants flirty Trudy (Shanan Custer), stern Gretchen (Heather Meyer), and mentor Carol (Maureen Tubbs), and the bromance pilots (Tom Winner and Eric Webster). Madeline learns to "be the underwire" and stand firm with problem passengers. That's about all that happens, but the entire cast is fantastically funny, there are plenty of local references, and airline travel is so accurately represented it almost made me nauseous. This is a cute, fun, and entertaining show written by and starring a bunch of funny women (and a few men).

Fringe Festival 2015: "Couple Fight"

Day: 9

Show: 43

Title: Couple Fight

Category: Comedy

By: Weggel-Reed Productions

Created by: Anna Weggel-Reed and Tom Reed

Location: Theatre in the Round

Summary: Six funny real-life couples reenact a funny real-life fight.

Highlights: What happens when two funny people get married, and then they fight? Judging by Couple Fight, it's hilarious, at least it is to those of us watching, and probably also to the couple once they move beyond the moment. Such is the simple premise of this show that features five married couples and one pair of BFFs. John and Lacey Zeiler fight about him faking a stroke in Vegas to help him win at poker, and not telling her about it beforehand so she could play along. On one of their first dates, Maggie and Marissa Sotos argue about whether a book is a hamburger or a hot dog (first of all, it's a book, second of all, it's obviously a hot dog). Emily Schmidt and Maureen Tubbs' disagreement about the rules of Pictionary turn a fun girls' night into a dramatic scene (I'm with Maureen on this one, you gotta have rules). Laura Zabel and Levi Weinhagen fight about whether Laura's suggestion for a sketch is funny (for the record - it is!). Lizzie Gardner gets mad at Bobby when he farts in the middle of a deep conversation. And finally, Anna Weggel-Reed gets upset that husband Tom (played convincingly by Adam Hummel because Tom was too busy directing) doesn't properly celebrate her on her birthday. The rest of us non-comedians only wish we could fight this funny!

Fringe Festival 2015: "The Mrs."

Day: 9

Show: 39

Title: The Mrs.

Category: Comedy

By: Schmidtshow Productions

Written by: Emily Schmidt

Location: Theatre in the Round

Summary: A new reality show called PolyGIMME A Break features four very different women married to the same man, who mysteriously goes missing.

Highlights: I really enjoyed this show that centered on these four fabulous women - Samantha Baker Harris (as the new wife), Rita Boersma (the child-bearing wife), Shanan Custer (the working wife), and Maureen Tubbs (the first wife). Polygamy is something that's so foreign to most of us, it's ripe for comedy, and Emily Schmidt's script delivers. When the husband (Nate Morse), the center of their spokes, disappears, the truth comes out about who these women are, why they chose to enter this family, and what they want in life. Not only is it funny, but it's touching too, and I found myself empathizing with these very different women and wanting things to work out for them. On a related note, I think I need to watch Big Love again.

Fringe Festival 2015: "Collyard / Nelson's Guide to Reviewing Fringe Festival Shows & Other Tips to Help Keep Your Cool In the White-Hot World of Amateur Criticism OR "So You Kept Their Postcard; Now What?""

Day: 4

Show: 16

Title: Collyard / Nelson's Guide to Reviewing Fringe Festival Shows & Other Tips to Help Keep Your Cool In the White-Hot World of Amateur Criticism OR "So You Kept Their Postcard; Now What?

Category: Something Different

By: CNM Productions

Created by: Alex Collyard, Cody Nelson, and Samantha Dillion

Location: New Century Theatre

Summary: This is not a show but rather a seminar required by law for anyone with a Fringe button, led by top advertising team Collyard/Nelson.

Highlights: As an amateur theater reviewer at all times of the year, not just during Fringe, I was eager to attend this seminar to pick up a few tips. Here's what I learned from Alex and Cody, and their intern Sammy. Art exists in a vacuum... or maybe not in a vacuum. Art has no value until critics say something about it. There are three types of reviews: comparison reviews (this is not as good as that), expectation reviews (I thought this was going to have music but it doesn't), and crazy talk (angry words in all caps). Artists like reviews because they tell them if what they're doing is good or bad, and make them better people and artists. Amateur and professional reviewers are exactly the same, except one of them gets paid to do it. Just keep writing reviews until you get to that place where you feel like you've run out of words (been there, done that). Special guest Emily Schmidt, who has written six Fringe shows, including this year's The Mrs., read some actual scathing reviews that she's gotten. Her (sensible) tip is not to write anything that you wouldn't say to the person's face. Intern Sammy's tip is to think of shows as gifts from your aunt - maybe it's not right for you but it might be right for someone else. OK, breaking from the joke for a moment, this is a very clever idea for a show, very meta-Fringe, and very funny. At least to this amateur reviewer.

"What's A Ocean? And Other Valid Question from Minnesota Girls" at Bryant Lake Bowl

I'm a Minnesota girl, but unlike Madde Gibba and Emily Schmidt, I've never wanted to live anywhere else. These two local theater/comedy artists have recently moved to the East and West Coasts, respectively, to find their fortunes. But they still have strong roots in and love for their home state, and returned for a one-night-only performance of their new sketch comedy show What's A Ocean? at the Bryant Lake Bowl.* And even though comedy is not my main interest (I'm in too deep with the theater scene to go too far into the comedy world; I do like to have one or two nights off a week), I really enjoyed Madde's Fringe show Dear Madde, and What's A Ocean? sounded like a fun concept, so I went, and really enjoyed it.

Madde and Emily have written a series of short two-person sketches about their new respective hometowns - NYC (aka the greatest city in the world) and L.A. (never been, and have no desire to go). The show opens and closes with a witty voiceover explaining the situation, and they make nice use of voiceover and video in several of the sketches. Topics covered include the juicing craze, calling home obsessively, the dangers of nannying, the stress of traveling in L.A. (traffic) and NYC (subway), a hippie cafe called "Cafe Gratitude," meeting old friends at a party and telling them about your new life, and my favorite sketch - online dating (using scarily real profiles). Madde and Emily also each read a humorous piece they'd written, Madde about life in Brooklyn, and Emily a letter to her future daughter.

Madde and Emily are two funny and talented Minnesota women and I wish them well in their new homes on the Coasts. But I also hope they continue to come home to Minnesota on occasion to share their talents with us!



*I had never been to the Bryant Lake Bowl before, although I'd heard about it and walked past it during Fringe week. It's a cute little theater at the back of a restaurant and, yes, bowling alley. Something to note for next time - food and bar service at your seat!