"The Heart Sellers" at Guthrie Theater

The final play of the Guthrie's 2023-2024 season in their proscenium theater was the Pulitzer Prize-winning play English, about a group of students in an English class in Iran, preparing to become immigrants and facing all of the challenges that entails. Currently on the proscenium stage is a play that serves as a wonderful companion piece, telling another piece of the immigrant story. The new play The Heart Sellers (by Lloyd Suh, author of the brilliant play The Chinese Lady seen at Open Eye last fall) is about two women newly immigrated to the U.S. from South Korea and the Philippines. One lonely Thanksgiving day, they find a surprising and revelatory friendship in this two-hander that's funny and real and relatable and moving. We all come from immigrants (except for those people indigenous to this land), some more recently than others, but it always requires a leaving behind of valuable things (home, culture, family, language) in order to pursue a better quality of life (safety, security, opportunity). These two women embody that conflict in a palpable way, and it's both heart-breaking and heart-warming. See The Heart Sellers at the Guthrie Theater through January 25.

"Girl Shakes Loose" at Penumbra Theatre

Girl Shakes Loose is the musical we need right now. It's playing at Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul through May 14 and you should definitely go see it, but I'm hoping it has continued life after this run. I don't know what the creators/producers have planned, but I would love to see it on Broadway. I think we need to see it on Broadway. Written by a black female composer/playwright team (Imani Uzuri music and lyrics, Zakiyyah Alexander book and lyrics) and incorporating the poetry of Sonia Sanchez, a poet in the Black Arts Movement,* Girl Shakes Loose is something we've never seen before. Namely, a musical about a contemporary black woman with an all black cast. Musicals with a black female lead** are few and far between (the only ones I can think of are Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, The Color Purple, Caroline or Change, Aida, Porgy and Bess) and are all set in the past. Most musicals that feature an all black cast are about overcoming hardships - racism, abuse, poverty. Which are important stories to tell but definitely do not represent the entirety of the African American experience. Girl Shakes Loose is a different narrative. It's about a young black woman living her life and figuring out who she is and where she fits in the world. It shouldn't be revolutionary in 2017 to see a musical created by black women about a contemporary black woman in America, but it is. I'm thrilled to have witnessed it and excited to watch it go out into the world from here.