Minnesota Fringe Festival 2025: "Shrieking Harpies Presents: Period Piece"

Day: 4

Show: 15

Title: Shrieking Harpies Presents: Period Piece

Category: Comedy / Improv / Musical Theater / Original Music / Audience participation / LGBTQIA+ Content

By: The Shrieking Harpies

Created by: Lizzie Gardner, Taj Ruler, Hannah Wydeven, and Justin Nellis on the Keys

Location: Barker Center

Summary: An improved musical, set in a period chosen by votes on The Shrieking Harpies' Instagram.

Highlights: Improvisers/singers/performers Lizzie, Taj, and Hannah are such pros at this (accompanied by Justin on keys) that this year they gave themselves a new challenge - a period piece! At the show I attended (the one and only 10pm show for this morning person, that's how much I love them) the period was the 1990s, which for someone who was a fully grown adult in the '90s doesn't feel like a period piece, it feels like a few years ago. So unfortunately I didn't really get the period piece feel from this show that I wanted; it was really just like any other Shrieking Harpies show. Which is to say - beautifully performed, ridiculously funny, with characters and storylines that come to a satisfying conclusion. Go see one of their final two shows, and be sure to vote on what period you'd like to see, hopefully one that's longer than 30 years ago.

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.

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2023: "The Shrieking Harpies"

Day: 2

Show: 4

Title: The Shrieking Harpies

Category: COMEDY / IMPROV / MUSICAL THEATER / AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION

By: The Shrieking Harpies

Created by: Lizzie Gardner, Justin Nellis, Taj Ruler, and Hannah Wydeven

Location: Rarig Arena

Summary: An improvised musical based on audience prompts, new every night!

Highlights: The Shrieking Harpies are another sure thing good show. What you see will be different from what I saw, which was a family friendly gay period piece. But what will be the same is three talented performers, and one talented musician, creating a brand new musical storytelling show before your very eyes. It's so polished, with recurring musical themes, multiple characters played by just three actors, and a plot with beginning, middle, and end, that it's almost hard to believe it's improvised. But the trio of Lizzie Gardner, Taj Ruler, and Hannah Wydeven (with Justin Nellis on keyboard accompanying not just the songs but also providing underscoring for all of the scenes) have been doing this so long that they can finish each other's... harmonies. Like any good improv troupe, they can follow along and see where the others are going, and somehow create a compelling and entertaining story (this one about two lonely men in Jane Austen's England, one with seven sisters, one of whom is pregnant - this might come up a lot since Lizzie is too), with surprisingly great music that I'm still singing in my head ("you're not alone," "go off the edge with me," "white gloves without a spec"). If you've never seen The Shrieking Harpies before at the Fringe or TC Horror Fest or any of the other places they perform, you're just not doing it right. And if you have, you know how much fun their shows always are.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

2022 Twin Cities Horror Festival at the Crane Theater

Here's the thing: I don't like horror. I don't watch horror movies. Halloween means nothing to me other than the opportunity for fun-sized candy. But what I do love is the #TCTheater artists who create new and inventive work for the genre-specific mini-fringe fest known as the Twin Cities Horror Festival. Their 11th season includes 11 shows, with performances daily now through October 30. If you love horror, this is definitely going to be your thing. And even if you don't, there's a lot to enjoy. I saw six of the 11 shows; keep reading for brief thoughts on each one, and for more in-depth TCHF coverage, follow my horror-loving friends at Minnesota Theater Love and The Stages of MN.

"Twin Cities Horror Festival" at the Southern Theater

The 8th annual Twin Cities Horror Festival concludes today, and surprisingly this was only my 2nd time attending. Or maybe not surprisingly; unlike my friends at Minnesota Theater Love, who love all things horror and TCHF, horror is not my thing, and Halloween is just another day to go to the theater and an excuse to buy half price candy the next day. But after spending the day at the Southern Theater yesterday, I realized that TCHF is just like a mini Minnesota Fringe Festival (drawing from the same pool of artists, with a similar structure), except that everything is a little spookier. Like Fringe it's a well run festival, but unlike Fringe you don't have to race between venues. You can just park yourself at the Southern for a few hours or a whole day. The festival concludes today with six shows, including two of the below five fantastic shows that I saw yesterday, so use that extra hour you gained to see some fun and spooky theater.

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2019: "The Shrieking Harpies"

Day: 1

Show: 1

Title: The Shrieking Harpies

Category: COMEDY / IMPROV / MUSICAL THEATER

By: Shrieking Harpies

Created by: The Shrieking Harpies

Location: Strike Theater

Summary: "Shrieking Harpies is a fierce femme powered musical improv trio dedicated to bringing bad-assery to the improv stage."

Highlights: The Shrieking Harpies perform regularly at Huge Theater, usually past my bedtime, so I was happy to finally see a full set from them. It's great fun, very feminist (in the mostly male-dominated world of improv), and a perfect way to start my 2019 Fringe. Based solely on the audience suggestion "astronaut," performers Lizzie Gardner, Taj Ruler, and Hannah Wydeven created an entire story with multiple characters and a beginning, middle, and end, that even mostly made sense! The show you see will be different than what I saw, but I loved this tale of female astronauts (and their moms) finally getting to be heroes in space. Because women were born for space! It's pretty remarkable to watch them create the story live in front of you, and with songs too! They improvise funny, clever, silly, melodic songs (with harmonies), along with Justin Nellis improvising on the keyboard (and playing not just for the songs, but providing an improvised soundtrack for the entire story). If you like improv, and musical theater, and women telling women's stories - don't miss this one!

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

Minnesota Fringe Festival: "Five-Fifths of Mary Poppins" at Park Square Theatre

We're only three months away from the most hectic, exiting, exhausting, wonderful week in #TCTheater: the Minnesota Fringe Festival! This year's festival will take place August 1-11 (with the related Family Fringe happening July 26-28 and August 2-4), but events have been happening all year. May brings one of my favorite Fringe events, the "Five-Fifths" benefit, in which a popular movie is divided into five parts and handed to five Fringe companies for them to interpret as they wish. It's a very clever concept, and one that really showcases what's unique about each company. This year's choice was Mary Poppins, and the results were, as my friend Jules from Minnesota Theater Love succinctly put it, "weird and fun." Just like Fringe!