"A Star Full of Skies: The Values Play Experience" by Wonderlust Productions at the O'Shaughnessy's Frey Theater

Wonderlust Productions has a unique theater model. They make theater for the community, with the community, by the community, and that community varies with every show. The spend a couple of years interviewing people and creating an original piece of theater that strives to convey their experience, whether it's caregivers, or the incarcerated, or people who work in our state government. The community this time is, well, all of us, and the topic is as simple and as complex as our values. This is an extremely timely and relevant piece of theater, at a time that feels more divided than ever, when people's values seem so vastly different from each other. But can we find common ground among our values? How do we convey our values to others? How to we put those values in action building a neighborhood, a community, a country? These are the ideas that A Star Full of Skies grapples with, in a really playful and engaging way. Because this is an "experience," the audience gets to participate in the storytelling (but not in a threatening or burdensome way). Read on to find out how, and click here to get your tickets to this unique theatrical experience before it closes next weekend.

"Thank You for Holding: The Caregiver Play Project" by Wonderlust Productions at 825 Arts

Wonderlust Productions is unique in the kind of theater that they make. Whether it's prison, or state government, or in this case caregiving, they spend a couple years researching a topic, specifically by interviewing people in the community who live in it. Then they create a new piece of theater, with both professional actors and these community consultants acting in the story. The result here is a very moving, raw, truthful depiction of caregiving, the pain and the joys and the endless bureaucracy of navigating a broken health care system. While I have never been a caregiver (yet, as this show reminds us), at least not to humans, I have been a witness to caregiving, and it is probably the hardest and most necessary job there is. But a thankless and often unrecognized one, so kudos to Wonderlust to shining a light on it, and letting caregivers tell their own story. Thank You for Holding continues at the new theater space 825 Arts on University in St. Paul through November 3.

"The Labyrinth and the Minotaur: The Incarceration Play Project" by Wonderlust Productions at Mixed Blood Theatre

Four years in the making, Wonderlust Productions' newest piece The Labyrinth and the Minotaur: The Incarceration Play Project reimagines the myth of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth in which it is kept as the Minnesota Corrections system. For this project they collected  stories from over 230 people who live and work within this system, and the huge cast (perhaps the largest I've ever seen) includes many of these people, alongside seven professional actors. It's a really beautiful, inspiring, and thought-provoking piece about an incredibly relevant issue - this country's broken, cruel, and racist system of incarceration. This is a theater company dedicated to elevating the voices of the unheard, and there are few voices less heard than those of the incarcerated. Here they get to tell their own stories in an empowering and powerful way. Although the play is a bit too long (three hours and 15 minutes on opening night) and would benefit from some editing, it's very worthwhile and important. See it through May 22 at Mixed Blood Theatre; only five more performances remain.

"Hopscotch: Pop-Up Plays about the Future" by Wonderlust Productions at Frogtown Farm and Park

Wonderlust Productions' newest project is popping up in St. Paul parks this weekend and next. They asked an intrepid group of playwrights to imagine a future world. Which, as co-Artistic Directors Leah Cooper and Alan Berks admitted in their pre- and mid-show talks, is a difficult thing to do right now. But these ten playwrights, some of #TCTheater's best, did just that. The result is Hopscotch, a series of ten ten-ish-minute plays presented in two sets. I caught one set on a perfectly gorgeous late summer afternoon in Frogtown Farm and Park, and it was an entertaining, inspiring, and at times worrisome look at our future, and through the imagined hindsight, our present. Click here for more information and to make a pay-what-you-will reservation for today's two sets at Frogtown, or next weekend at Newell Park.

"Our House: The Capitol Play Project" by Wonderlust Productions at the Minnesota State Capitol

I've never experienced anything quite like Wonderlust Productions' Our House: The Capitol Play Project. I've been to site-specific productions before, but none that have been written specifically about that site, telling the true stories of the people who daily inhabit that site, with a cast largely made up of those people. The site in this case is our house, the people's house, the Capitol of the great state of Minnesota, and the people whose stories are told are not the famous and/or infamous politicians one usually associates with the government, but everyone who works there, performing the unglamorous day-to-day hard work of keeping the state running. After following the actors (and "real people!") around our house for two and a half hours (a building I have not stepped foot in since a barely remembered school field trip over 30 years ago), I felt both better and worse about the system that governs our lives. Our House is unabashedly sincere and optimistic about the people who work in government, but it's also harshly realistic about the inefficiencies and corruption within the system. It's a shame this is such a short run (just six sold-out* performances), and I really hope they bring it back. More impactful than any high school civics class could be, it should be required viewing for every citizen.