2025 Twin Cities Horror Festival at the Crane Theater

The leaves are turning and the weather is finally cooler, which means it's time for the 14th Twin Cities Horror Festival! And even though October is notoriously the busiest month in #TCTheater, I managed to carve out a couple of days to see almost half of this year's 14 shows in the 15-day festival. I'm not in general a fan of horror or even Halloween (except for the candy), but I am a fan of the talented artists behind these shows, whom you will know from the Minnesota Fringe Festival or other theaters around town. In fact, TCHF is like a mini-Fringe, except that all of the less-than-an-hour shows are all horror-themed and presented in one venue, which makes scheduling easier. For full coverage of the festival, please visit fellow Twin Cities Theater Bloggers and horror fanatics The Stages of MN and Minnesota Theater Love. For my reviews, scroll down. I saw three very strong shows yesterday, with a few more scheduled for this week, so check back. You can find the full schedule of events and show details here, with the festival continuing through October 30.

Update October 26: I've added reviews of the shows I saw yesterday, bringing my total up to six. All of them are great, so either I chose well, or it's a strong year at TCHF. You still have a few more days to catch some great shows!

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2025: "Fangs and Bangs (and Sangs)"

Day: 7

Show: 24

Title: Fangs and Bangs (and Sangs)

Category: Comedy / Musical Theater / Storytelling / LGBTQIA+ Content

By: Special When Lit

Written by: Nissa Nordland

Location: Southern Theater

Summary: #TCTheater fave Nissa Nordland enlists some of her talented friends (different every night) to read some of the "sexy vampire tales" that she wrote as a teenager.

Highlights: Nissa has written a lot of shows for Fringe and the TC Horror Festival, and this is like her origin story. Turns out she has always been interested in writing sexy, scary stories, and she has her journals and a floppy disc full of stories to prove it! She's an endearing host as she explains the concept of the show and then gets vulnerable, reading her journal entries full of her innermost teenage thoughts. A slide show of yearbook photos, journal entries, and sketches support her storytelling. She sings a couple of late '90s / early aughts songs accompanied by musicians (Nicholas Nelson and Keith Hovis at the show I attended), but the highlight really is the reading of a vampire story about a redheaded teenaged vampire named Lennox and her romance with a vampire hunter named Noah. The story is continuous throughout the five shows, so you'll need to go back if you want to find out how things turn out. Reading the story on the night I attended were Amber Bjork, Derek Lee Miller, Brettina Davis, and Duck Washington, who came prepared for the steamy scenes. And the section of the story that I saw got pretty steamy! It's very funny watching these actors read Nissa's teenage dreams, but it's even more fun to watch her react with a combination of sheer delight and utter horror.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here. 

2024 Twin Cities Horror Festival at The Crane Theater

The weather is (finally) turning cooler, the brightly colored leaves are falling from the trees, which means it must be time for the 13th annual Twin Cities Horror Festival. Unlike my friends at Minnesota Theater Love and The Stages of Minnesota (follow them for full coverage), I am not in general a fan of horror. But I am a fan of this mini Fringe festival that features many of my favorite Fringe artists. So I'm seeing a handful of shows this year (October also happens to be the busiest theater month of the year in general, and this year in particular). I was at the first show of the festival on last Thursday evening before continuing my stretch of five non-TCHF shows in five days, and then returned a few times to see a few more. I saw 7 of the 11 shows this year, read about them below, and visit the TCHF website for details and tickets (warning: there are sellouts already, particularly in the smaller studio space). Shows continue daily through November 3 at The Crane Theater in Northeast Minneapolis.

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2023: "Stabby Stab Stab"

Day: 4

Show: 18

Title: Stabby Stab Stab

Category: DRAMA / HORROR / ORIGINAL MUSIC / HISTORICAL CONTENT

By: Special When Lit and The Winding Sheet Outfit

Written by: Nissa Nordland Morgan

Location: Crane Theater Studio

Summary: A retelling of the true story of two Wisconsin tweens, obsessed with the story of Slender Man, who stabbed one of their classmates 16 times.

Highlights: This first ever co-production between the artists who brought us the wild and wacky Colonel Sanders story Finger Lickin' Good and the beautifully haunting Årsgång: What You Follow Follows You at last year's Fringe debuted at the Twin Cities Horror Festival last fall (it's like a mini genre specific Fringe Festival). They're remounting it as an independently produced show at the Crane Theater, with shows every night at 8:30 or 10:00. It's an easy 5-10 minute drive from the main hub of the festival, so I recommend stopping by at the end of one of your days. You will be rewarded by a dark and creepy, yet sad and lovely tale. Written by SWL's Nissa Nordland and directed by TWSO's Amber Bjork, it really is the perfect blend of the former company's wild sense of fun and the latter's meticulous and thoughtful attention to detail. Nissa and Kayla Dvorak Feld play the two girls, both so believable and somehow empathetic despite their horrible deeds. Like TWSO always does, Stabby Stab Stab explores the human side of the splashy headline, and posits a theory for how this childhood friendship went so terribly wrong. With a live soundscape created by Derek Lee Miller and Sam Landman, beautifully designed (by Amber) projections of text and images, and cute and creepy props that fill a child's bedroom, this show effectively tells this true story with a thorough, thoughtful, and consistent tone of creepiness, tragedy, and humanness. It's performed in the Crane's smaller studio space (making it a sellout risk), which only makes it more intense and intimate.

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.

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2022: Wrap-Up and Favorites

It's the closing weekend of the first fully live and in-person Minnesota Fringe Festival in nearly three years, but my fringing time is done, at least until next year. I've moved on from my favorite theater festival to my favorite music festival (Storyhill Fest in Deerwood). Sitting in a coffee shop in Crosby, reflecting on the eperience of the last seven days, in which I saw 23 short pieces of theater / music / storytelling / dance / spoken word / any combination thereof, the overwhelming feeling is gratitude. Gratitude that despite a global pandemic, financial issues, and cancelled performances, adventerous audiences (of which I consider myself a part) were able to gather to experience adventurous art (of which I consider myself an admirer). After two years of (mostly) virtual festivals, I didn't realize how much I missed this until I was back. To be immersed in a life in which the only goal is to see as much theater as you can, to eat, sleep, and breathe theater, is a theater blogger's dream. But the best part of Minnesota Fringe is the community feeling it engenders. Walking down the street, particularly in the Cedar-Riverside hub, and seeing so many theater-goers and theater-makers there for the same purpose, and chatting about theater with artists, friends, and strangers, is something that only happens at Fringe. Though I only saw 23 of the 100+ shows, and I know I missed some great shows (follow my friends at Lettered in Theatre and The Stages of MN, as well as the OG Fringe blogger Single White Fringe Geek, for continuing coverage), that tiny feeling of regret and FOMO is overwhelmed by feelings of satisfaction and happiness that Minnesota Fringe is back! Read on for my favorite shows of this year's fest, and visit the Fringe website (sometimes slow but very informative) for today's schedule. There's still time to get out there and #seethefringe, #bethefringe, #supportthefringe!

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2022: "Finger Lickin' Good"

Day: 5

Show: 17

Title: Finger Lickin' Good

Category: COMEDY / HORROR / ORIGINAL MUSIC / AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION / HISTORICAL CONTENT

By: Special When Lit

Written by: Heather Meyer & Nissa Nordland Morgan

Location: Rarig Center Thrust

Summary: A sort of true biography of Colonel Harland David Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, that turns into a wild tale of sex, greed, and chicken.

Highlights: I don't know what kind of genius and/or warped minds think of an idea like this, but it's cluckin' brilliant (I can't resist the chicken puns any more than this team can). And it's also completely ridiculous, in the best way. Sam Landman is the perfect Colonel, with the swagger, the accent, the iconic white suit (when he's wearing anything at all), and the magnetism of the man who started the world's second largest restaurant chain. We traverse more or less chronologically through Harland's life, from his unhappy childhood, to his marriage and many affairs, to starting the KFC franchise, and eventually selling it (which, in this retelling, he regretted). The ensemble (the playwrights along with Rita Boersma, Jonathan Feld, and Duck Washington, all playing multiple roles, and chickens) are hilariously over the top as they tell this story, using lots of clever chicken props. All of the above would make for a great show, but the cherry on top is Shanan Custer as the frazzled fact checker, standing just outside the story, providing sound effects and checking in her big book of facts. Watching her watch the show, and react to the shenanigans, makes it even funnier. The show also includes a couple of original songs (by Nicholas Nelson) with some funky chicken choreography (by Laura Mahler). There aren't really any horror elements in this piece, except for one delicious final moment that maybe isn't necessary, but makes my vegetarian heart glad. Audiences may come for the salacious show image (the best one in the fest this year), but they'll be rewarded by a wholly original and wildly creative story about an iconic figure whom we thought we knew, but it turns out we didn't know him at all.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2020: "Lauren and Nissa Present: Fun Times"

Location: Nightly Fringe (Aug. 9)

Length: 40 minutes

Title: Lauren and Nissa Present: Fun Times

By: Special When Lit

Summary: A series of comedy sketches, performed live over zoom (natch).

Highlights: This was just a really fun show for the last night of the festival. Nissa Nordland and Lauren Anderson are both very funny women, and they work well together. The running gag was that since this was on the internet, who knows if anyone's watching, so they can do whatever they want with "no consequences!" Sketches included a spoof of a work zoom meeting with a surprise appearance, Lauren afflicted with "cool disease," Nissa singing a silly song, and my favorite - a Jane Austen spoof called "Dignity and Displeasure." And as a (former) clarinetist, I very much appreciated Nissa's playing between scenes, and her pre-show covers of such classics as "My Heart Will Go On" and "Music of the Night."

Read all of my Nightly Fringe mini-reviews here.

Read all of my Digital Hub mini-reviews here.