Minnesota Fringe Festival 2025: "The Kendra Plant Variety Hour: Good Things Edition! -with special guests-"

Day: 7

Show: 23

Title: The Kendra Plant Variety Hour:  Good Things Edition! -with special guests-

Category: Comedy / Dance / Original Music / Storytelling

By: Kendra Plant

Created by: the artists

Location: Mixed Blood Theatre

Summary: A variety show including storytelling, Japanese lion dance, singer/songwriter performance, and burlesque ballet.

Highlights: If the Minnesota Fringe Festival is a sampler platter of different kinds of performance, this show is a microcosm of that concept. Kendra Plant (who, full disclosure, is a friend and fellow member of The Twin Cities Theater Bloggers at her blog Artfully Engaging) has constructed a show around the idea of the artistic process itself. A longtime supporter of the arts, Kendra is trying something new as a first-time Fringe producer, stepping on stage for the first time in decades. She's a charming and disarming host as she walks us through her process of creating a show. The three guest artists (the same at every performance) include a little bit of everything, including some art you won't see anywhere else at the Fringe. TAM Edo Bayashi Ensemble performs a lion dance accompanied by drum and flute, really making the lion come to life in a way that may remind you of your favorite pet. Singer/songwriter Emily Boyajian (whose gorgeous and inspiring original opera Transition was a hit at last year's Fringe) sings two beautiful and poignant original songs about transition and being yourself. Last but not least, Jolie Meshbesher performs two dances, the first a more traditional ballet with aerial elements as she hangs off of a free-standing ballet bar, the second more modern and edgy as it turns into a burlesque ballet. If you're looking for a variety of art you won't see anywhere else at the Fringe, this is a great one to see. And it may just inspire you to try something new, get out of your comfort zone, learn a new skill, or collaborate with others to make some good things. We certainly need more of them in this world!

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here. 

"Maple and Vine" by The BAND Group at Center for Performing Arts

The 2011 play Maple and Vine explores what might happen if we really could return to the "good old days," the era that the Cleavers and Ozzie and Harriet make look so perfectly pleasant and innocent on TV. With all the recent talk of returning to a time when the world, and America, was supposedly greater than now, The BAND Group chose a great time to present this play. With minimal staging in an intimate space, the audience is almost uncomfortably close to this fake '50s world as its true ugliness is slowly revealed. As they always do, The BAND Group is partnering with community organizations, the Citizens League and the League of Women Voters, who both have materials and representatives at the show. Reminding us to use our voting power, as the play reminds us of the things at stake.