"Ishmael" at Jungle Theater

"I wanted to bring you a rollicking tale for a long winter's night."
- Sarah Rasmussen, Artistic Director

"This is a memory play. About a great adventure and the great wounds it leaves behind."
- Leo Geter, Writer and Director

Ishmael, a new adaptation of Herman Melville's Great American Novel Moby Dick, began as a Minnesota Fringe Festival show in 2015. Somehow I missed it (I only saw 44 shows that year), and I'm also not familiar with the source material (my first experience with it was Theater Coup d'Etat's epic adaptation a few months ago). But even if you did see the Fringe show, or have read the book, you haven't experience Moby Dick quite like this. Since the original production, writer/director Leo Geter (who pulled all of the dialogue directly from the book) has added music, and the result is an inventive and unique piece of music-theater storytelling.

"Moby Dick" by Theatre Coup d'Etat at Fallout Arts Initiative Co-op Studio 3

"Call me Ishmael." Even thought I've never read Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick, one of the most well known and well respected American novels, this line that opens the book was familiar to me. And so it was a certain kind of thrill to hear the line spoken Monday night in a small art studio space in South Minneapolis, my first experience with this epic tale. Theatre Coup d'Etat's Artistic Director James Napoleon Stone adapted the novel into a two and a half hour play and directs this production, with a terrific 13-person cast, a cool found space, interesting movement, and lovely musical accompaniment. The result is an epic yet intimate telling of this classic American story.