I'm not really a sports person (with the exception of my Minnesota Twins), but sports is a great metaphor for life, and a great framework to build a play around. Mixed Blood Theatre has done a couple of great ones -
Colossal about football, and
Safe at Home about baseball in a site-specific production at CHS Field (home of the Twins' Triple-A affiliate team the St. Paul Saints). Even more relevant to this discussion, Jungle Theater has done
two productions of The Wolves, about a high school girls' soccer team, and last year Penumbra Theatre staged
FLEX, about a high school girls' basketball team. With the growing attention on girls' and women's sports, it's a great time to debut another play in this genre - Katie Ka Vang's
Sixpack. Drawing from her own history and culture,
Sixpack features a group of Hmong women who play volleyball together (and sometimes against each other). But as with all of these plays, it's not really about volleyball, it's about friendship, mother-daughter relationships, and community.
See this funny, real, and ultimately heart-warming world premiere play at Jungle Theater through June 29.
