Minnesota Fringe Festival 2025: "The Abortion Chronicles"

Day: 2

Show: 4

Title: The Abortion Chronicles

Category: Drama / Spoken Word / Storytelling / Historical content / Political content

By: Mermaid Productions

Created by: Ariel Pinkerton

Location: Rarig Arena

Summary: A collection of true abortion stories.

Highlights: I've seen this show twice before, once in the late Obama years, once shortly after Roe v. Wade was overturned, but unfortunately it's never been more necessary, as women's rights are continually chipped away at, especially in the area of reproductive health care. The show is well constructed, centered around a clinic, with women coming in for consultations or abortions, escorted by a volunteer through the protestors outside. We hear stories from the clinic nurse (played by Christy Johnson) and the volunteer (Patti Gage), as well as the women (and a few men) who come through. Some of the stories are performed by the people who lived them, some by actors, and I honestly cannot tell which are which. All of them feel truthful, real, and raw. Every abortion story is different and specific, but also all the same. As they say in the show, "I'm pregnant and I can't be, the rest is window dressing." But that window dressing is complex and intricate and very human. Whether or not you've seen this show before, it's worth seeing to hear these stories. It may be one of the most important shows in the festival this year.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here. 

Twin Cities Improv Festival at the Phoenix Theatre

With the closure of HUGE Theater last year, the Twin Cities Improv Festival has a new home - Phoenix Theater in Uptown. For four days, you can watch improv troupes from here in the Twin Cities (and we have a lot of great ones) as well as troupes from around the country and even some from other countries. I attended the first, all-local, night of the festival and had a great time watching some beloved familiar improvisors and some new-to-me improvisors. Each had their own spin on the artform, most started with a suggestion or two from the audience and they took that somewhere unexpected. The Phoenix is a great welcoming location (despite the never-ending construction on Hennepin), with snacks and drinks (including espresso drinks) sold in the cozy lobby. Keep reading for my thoughts on the eight improv troupes I saw (two or three troupes are grouped together in each set, with up to four sets a night), and click here for the schedule of shows continuing through Sunday.

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 2023: "5 Prisoners"

Day: 10

Show: 38

Title: 5 Prisoners

Category: DRAMA / HORROR / SCI-FI

By: Ghoulish Delights

Written by: Pat Harrigan, John Heimbuch, Ariel Pinkerton, Tim Uren, and Duck Washington

Location: Southern Theater

Summary: Five short stories about prisoners that are either weird, funny, or terrifying, or some combination thereof.

Highlights: This was a fun show because each piece was just about 10 minutes long, performed by the same ensemble cast (Tim Uren, Duck Washington, Ariel Pinkerton, Boo Segersin, and Gregory Parks). Prisoner could be literal or figurative in the stories. In a historical piece, a woman is arrested for performing male roles in theater. In a horror piece, a woman donating plasma is inducted into a cult. There's a sci-fi piece in which a man is turned into a random number generator, a dark and disturbing piece about torture, and a fantasy piece about an astronaut captured by aliens. The five pieces vary in tone, cleverly utilize the same few set pieces, and allow us to watch actors playing different characters in the space of an hour. Well-acted, well-written, and an interesting concept - the mini-anthology.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

"Brujería for Beginners" by 20% Theatre Company and Lightning Rod at Mixed Blood Theatre

Amongst the theater companies recently lost to the pandemic (and other reasons) are Theatre Unbound (featuring female-identifying artists and stories), Uprising Theatre Company (transgender and gender nonconforming artists and stories), and now 20% Theatre Company (all of the above). The rest of #TCTheater really needs to step up to make sure that these stories continue to be told, and that women and members of the LGBTQ+ community are given a seat at the table. One new company that will be taking up the mantle is Lightning Rod, "a transgender-led, majority BIPOC organism, dedicated to legacy, development and opportunities for queer and trans artists," which is partnering with 20% Theatre's on their 50th and final show. Brujería for Beginners opened at Mixed Blood Theatre last night and it was a bittersweet event, full of celebration as well as sober finality. The family dramedy, with a magical twist, is a sweet and charming show, and the energy in the firehouse was palpable.

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2018: "Deep in The 100 Acre Woods: A "Pooh"-dunnit?"

Day: 3

Show: 9

Title: Deep in The 100 Acre Woods: A "Pooh"-dunnit?

Category: Comedy / Drama / Mystery

By: Fearless Comedy Productions

Directed by: Becci Schmidt

Location: Minnsky Theatre

Summary: A noir murder mystery featuring the characters from Winnie the Pooh as people, and Pooh as the victim.

Highlights: In this version of the story, the silly old bear is a gangster, womanizer, and club owner who doesn't treat his employees very well (played by James Fairbairn). When he's found dead on the stairs of his club The Honey Pot, Detective Christopher Robin (Joseph Facente) comes in to interrogate all Pooh's employees and figure out Pooh-dunnit. It's a very clever promise and so fun to see these beloved characters as people, retaining their characteristics, and the cast does a great job of bringing out character specificities. We have club singer and Pooh's girlfriend Eeyore (Lana Rosario), her piano accompanist Owl (Ian Welch), Tigger (Mike Hanson) - the bounce-er, bartender Rabbit (Gregory Parks), nervous stuttering Piglet (Mickaylee Shaughnessy), and mama Kanga (Lauren Haven) and her young adult son Roo (Nathan Kelly) who wants to know who his father is. Det. Robin questions each one in turn, with flashback scenes filling in the story. It seems everyone had a reason to hate Pooh (hate Winnie the Pooh, can you imagine?!), so when we eventually find out the culprit it really doesn't matter. The fun comes in watching these familiar childhood characters juxtaposed against this familiar noir mystery storytelling style where they really don't belong. Very fringey indeed.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

"Promise Land" by Transatlantic Love Affair at Guthrie Theater

Twin Cities Theater Bloggers' favorite theater of 2016, the charmingly named Transatlantic Love Affair, is making their Guthrie Theater debut as part of the Guthrie's new Level Nine Series. This series makes theater more accessible (all tickets for shows in the Dowling Studio are just $9), and also endeavors to engage theater-goers with what they call "community engagement activities," which often include post-show discussions or displays in the golden lobby. Hopefully TLA's participation in this series will allow people who don't know that TCTB knows about them to get on board with this truly unique and special physical theater company.

"An Octoroon" at Mixed Blood Theatre

The word octoroon is defined as "a person of one-eight black ancestry." The Octoroon is a 19th Century play by Irish playwright Dion Boucicault about which Wikipedia says, "among antebellum melodramas, it was considered second only in popularity to Uncle Tom's Cabin." An Octoroon is a new play by playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, who adapted the play and added himself as a character, writing the play and playing all the white male parts in white face, with the original playwright and his assistant playing roles in redface and blackface, while a rabbit seems to pull the strings behind the scenes. Got all that? Believe me, it's a lot to take in, and the play says some pretty profound things about race and racism in the past and present. But despite being a little perplexing and intentionally offensive (in a way that's not really offensive because it's satire), the whole thing is kinda brilliant in a crazy sort of way.

I'm not going to describe the plot of the play to you; it's one of those things you just have to see for yourself (and you should). Suffice it to say, this adaptation actually hews quite close to the original in the middle play-within-a-play bit, in which a kindly slave owner dies and leaves his kindly wife and heir with no money to save the plantation or its slaves, including the kindly dead slave owner's octoroon daughter whom his wife loves and they both treat like a daughter (because that happened). But before we get to all of that, the "black playwright" sets the scene by telling us the origins of this play, and why he was forced to play all the white male parts himself. Then the play begins, done in an exaggerated melodramatic style that points out the silliness of this depiction of the Old South, complete with piano accompaniment to heighten the mood (beautifully and cleverly composed and performed by Eric Mayson). In the fourth act of the play-with-a-play, the playwright and some of the other actors break out of character to describe the scene that's too difficult to stage, and to offer commentary on it. It's all very meta, and also offers some comments on theater itself (as well as some nifty pyrotechnics).

Director Nataki Garrett somehow keeps all of these timelines and realities moving together smoothly and making sense, and the cast fully commits to the melodrama of the piece. William Hodgson gives several excellent performances - as the playwright and both the kindly slaveowner's heir and the evil slaveowner, sometimes playing multiple characters in one scene, and even having a fight with himself (kudos again to Annie Enneking for her fight choreography). Jon Andrew Hegge is ridiculous (in the best way) as the Irish playwright in redface; Ricardo Vázquez portrays every stereotype of blackface; Jamila Anderson, Chaz Hodges, and Jasmine Hughes are amusing as the modern-talking slave women; and Jane Froiland is an absolute hoot as the stereotypical and overly dramatic Southern Belle. Megan Burns as the titular octoroon Zoe is the straight woman in this crazy scene, bringing dignity and humanity to her character. Last but not least, I'm not sure what Br'er Rabbit has to do with any of this, but Gregory Parks is nimble and slightly creepy in that oversized rabbit head (with movements delightfully punctuated by the aforementioned Eric Mayson's music).

William Hodgson and Megan Burns (photo by Rich Ryan)

At one point the playwright character complains that there's no novelty in the theater anymore. Which any theater-goer in this town knows is not true, and this play is Exhibit A. At the end of the play another character says, "we were just trying to make you feel something." An Octoroon will most definitely make you feel something, it will likely make you feel many things, some of them uncomfortable or even unpleasant. But that's not a bad thing in theater, in fact sometimes it's necessary. An Octoroon continues at Mixed Blood Theatre through November 15. Tickets are free through their Radical Hospitality program, or you can reserve tickets in advance for $20.


This article also appears on Broadway World Minneapolis.

"War with the Newts" by Sandbox Theatre at Park Square Theatre

When I was a kid, my sister and I would occasionally find a salamander in our backyard sandbox. They freaked me out, so gross and slimy and unexpected (we also sometimes found petrified cat poo, but that was decidedly less disturbing). To this day the thought of salamanders makes my skin crawl. But fortunately, the salamanders in Sandbox Theatre's War with the Newts are much less unpleasant, although the story they tell is still quite disturbing, albeit for different reasons. Based on the 1936 Czech novel of the same name, War with the Newts is a remount of Sandbox's successful 2007 production, and the first of Park Square Theatre's partnership with three smaller local theater companies* in their new theater in the basement of the Historic Hamm Building. It tells of a post-apocalyptic world in which a large and intelligent breed of newts (a kind of salamander) is discovered and abused by people (as sadly we're wont to do to "lesser creatures"), and then revolts to take over the world. Which as you can imagine has all kinds of allegories to the modern world. This fascinating story is brought to life in an incredibly inventive and unique way, with the ensemble beautifully personifying these strangely alien yet familiar creatures.

Before the show even starts, seven actors in newt costumes are creeping around the stage in a newt-like way, making what I assume are newt-like noises with their mouths, bodies, and little silver balls on their thumbs. At first it's difficult to tell the actors apart in their identical black catsuits with the gold tarnish, but soon you can detect slight differences in the face paint and body movement so that each newt takes on a somewhat distinct personality. Often speaking in unison, they begin to tell the story of the War, so that this history is not lost. The newts strive to be better than the humans that they defeated, declaring "newts should not kill newt!"

The newts don costumes as they tell the story, which begins with a sea captain who discovers them and puts them to work harvesting pearls from the deep. The humans teach the newts to work, keep them as pets, study them in zoos, eat them, all of the things that humans like to do to animals (or people who are seen as "other"). But in this case, the newts fight back after they're taught to be soldiers. And who can blame them? Human greed can only go so far before nature revolts.

The entire cast (which includes Derek Lee Miller, Evelyn Digirolamo, Gregory Parks, Heather Stone, Kristina Fjellman, Megan Campbell Lagas, and Wade A. Vaughn) is incredibly committed to the concept, remaining newts even through curtain call. It's pretty remarkable the way they crawl, crouch, swim, and creep around the stage, all while telling this very relevant and modern story. As they don a wig or mask to portray a human character, their spine straightens and somehow they're human again. They're aided in this transformation by costume designers Kathy Kohl and Mandi Johnson, who have created not just the newts' looks but also simple and clever accessories that help create the human characters (and one not so simple huge flouncy dress). The bleached wood set pieces simply set the scene and are used creatively throughout the show (designed by Derek Lee Miller). The cast takes turns creating music and sound effects on various percussive elements in a corner of the stage, which enriches the tone of the show. Video and sound distortion are also employed to create specific effects.

I'm so glad Sandbox Theatre (a company I only "discovered" last summer at the Fringe) is revisiting War with the Newts as they celebrate their 10th anniversary. It's a fascinating and unique creation, and really pushes the boundaries of what theater can do and be. And kudos to Park Square for providing a space for this kind of inventive theater to be seen, perhaps in front of audiences that wouldn't normally see it. Playing now through May 30, check it out for something a little different. Trust me, these are the kind of salamanders that you want to discover in your Sandbox.


*The other two productions in Park Square's partnership this summer are Theatre Pro Rata's The Illusion and Girl Friday Production's The Matchmaker. You can buy individual tickets to each show, or save money on a three-show package.