"The Gun Show" by Uprising Theatre at off-leash area art box

Every day there is another news story about people being killed by guns - mass shootings, gang violence, accidents, police shootings, and suicides. The numbers are staggering. And the worst part is, after each horrific occurrence, nothing changes. If anything, it only makes the two opposing sides double down on their firm unchanging opinions. That's no solution. Nothing changes, and more people die, and all of us live in fear. In her play The Gun Show, playwright E.M. Lewis says something to the effect that guns are what helped to build this great country of ours, but guns were never the point. Freedom was the point. And it doesn't feel very free right now, living with the fear of gun violence every time we step outside our home (and also inside the home for many people). The play had its first reading six years ago, and sadly grows more relevant and necessary every day. It's a fitting choice, then, for Uprising Theatre Company, a newish #TCTheater company that regularly partners with local non-profits to make a real difference in the community, beyond sharing important stories. This play is the second in their 2019 season that is entirely focused on gun violence, a much needed conversation to have.

"Antigone" at Park Square Theatre

"Who lives, who dies, who tells your story." In Sophocles' classic Greek play Antigone (the third of a de facto trilogy which begins with the tragedy of Oedipus, Antigone's father), pretty much everyone dies, including the title character. But in Park Square Theatre's basement stage, a group of talented women are telling her story. MJ (Meagan) Kedrowski adapted and directed the story for Theatre Coup d'Etat a few years ago, which Park Square's recently retired Artistic Director Richard Cook saw and asked her to remount for Park Square. Much of the cast and creative team return, along with some new artists, to rework the piece. One of the biggest changes is that this production features an all-female cast, and a mostly female creative and technical team. It's a powerful story of a strong and resilient woman who does what she believes is right for her family, despite the consequences she will face, powerfully told by this team of women in an engrossing and affecting way. Brave the cold and snow to visit the tumultuous world of Thebes in downtown St. Paul.

"Bull" by Hypnic Jerk Theatre at Element Boxing Gym

"Site-specific theater in a boxing ring, now that’s cool! Brand new #tctheater company Hypnic Jerk debuts with BULL. Note: the play is not about boxing it’s about office politics.
#itsametaphor"
-Cherry and Spoon Instagram

And a great metaphor it is. Director and Hypnic Jerk Theatre founder Kari Steinbach notes in the program that playwright Mike Bartlett was inspired to write Bull after watching a bullfight, but a boxing match works well too. They're staging the show in two locations on two weekends only, the first in Element Boxing Gym in St. Paul, the second at A Mill Artist Lofts in Minneapolis. I like the idea of a traveling show, making it more accessible to different communities (and people who are loathe to cross the river), but I'm glad I saw it in the first location, because it was really cool to watch a play in an actual boxing ring in an actual gym, something I've not done before. Just two more performances remain this Memorial Day Weekend, before the show moves across the river next weekend. Check it out for a short, intense, engaging, well directed and acted performance.

Fringe Festival 2017: "Crash and Burn: An American Success Story"

Day: 6

Show: 24

Title: Crash and Burn: An American Success Story

Category: Drama

By: Middle Name Productions

Created by: Eric Marinus and the ensemble

Location: Jungle Theater

Summary: An original story about an Evel Knievel-like daredevil who returns home to the trailer park where he grew up.

Highlights: I love the narration and musical soundtrack provided by Tiny Gene Poole on steel guitar, it makes everything more melancholy and tragic. For this is a tragic story, despite the ironic title. Johnny Meteor (Trevor Keeth) has had some success in the daredevil jumping-over-things-on-a-motorcycle world, but after one too many crashes and burns, and the death of his mother, he decides to spend some time in the trailer park. He runs into old friend Ruth (Lauren Diesch) and her daughter Grace (Megan Rene Guidry), who wants to leave her books behind and enter the world of jumping, against her mother's wishes. Despite the plot twist obvious to anyone who's ever seen a soap opera and an inevitable conclusion, the show is worthwhile because of the winning and natural performances by the cast (particularly Lauren Diesch's impressive dual roles) and that plaintive steel guitar.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

"Baltimore Waltz" by Theatre Coup d'Etat at SpringHouse Ministry Center

On a hot, sticky. busy, loud, crowded afternoon in Uptown (which is quickly becoming my least favorite neighborhood in which to see theater due to the never-ending traffic, construction, and parking difficulties), I found a cool, sweet, pleasing oasis in the SpringHouse Ministry Center. Theatre Coup D'Etat's production of the one-act 1990 Off-Broadway play The Baltimore Waltz is a funny, charming, poignant little waltz of a play. Playwright Paula Vogel wrote the play in response to her brother's death, and that sense of nostalgia, grief, and the ephemeral joy of life permeates every scene. The appealing three-person cast in the intimate setting sweep the audience up with them in this fantastical journey of the imagination.

"The Crucible" by Theatre Coup d'Etat at Zion Lutheran Church

I first saw Arthur Miller's 1953 play The Crucible last spring at the Guthrie, and was wowed at how this story about the infamous Salem witch trials of the late 17th Century, during which twenty people were put to death for the crime of witchcraft, speaks to the issues of the day. Things have changed a lot in the last year and a half, making the play's themes of religious fanaticism, mob mentality, and persecution of people who are different even more scarily relevant. How terrifying to live in a world where one person's false accusation can incite mass hysteria and result in the persecution of innocent people, a world that sadly isn't too far from the current reality. I'm not saying that our president elect is Abigail Williams, but I, and this excellent and intimate production by Theatre Coup d'Etat, am suggesting that we need to take a breath and look at the facts before we rush to condemn someone based on a spiteful rant. The Crucible dramatizes one of the greatest failings of the American, or rather pre-American, judicial system, and 60 years after it was written still remains a cautionary tale.

"Antigone" by Theatre Coup d'Etat at SpringHouse Ministry Center

Sitting in the lounge at SpringHouse Ministry Center (a venue I was familiar with from this year's Fringe), waiting to see Theatre Coup d'Etat's new adaptation of Sophocles' Antigone, I read the Wikipedia plot summary, as I often do before I see a really old play. The story of the sister who is condemned to death for giving her brother a proper burial started to sound familiar to me, and I realized I had seen it before, only it was called Burial at Thebes, and it was a sort of gospel retelling by Irish poet Seamus Haeney. Sophocles' trilogy of this ancient doomed family begins with Oedipus the King (you know Oedipus, the guy who was cursed by the gods to kill his father and marry his mother), continues with Oedipus at Colonus (which also has a gospel retelling called Gospel of Colonus), and ends with the story of Antigone, Oedipus' daughter. Also related is Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes, which tells the story of Antigone's two brothers who fought over control of Thebes after their father's death (which I experienced as a "hip-hop musical comedy-tragedy in Ten Thousand Things' The Seven). All of this preamble is just to say I was more familiar with the world of Antigone than I thought, and felt comfortable jumping right into this intense 90-minute adaptation. It's a story, or rather a piece of a story, that's been told many many times over the last few millennia. But a story that's still worth hearing, especially this version, which focuses on a strong female heroine standing up for her family and doing what she believes is right, no matter the consequences.