"Maggie's Brain" by Off-Leash Area at the Cowles Center

In Maggie's Brain, theater/dance company Off-Leash Area expresses one family's struggle with schizophrenia through movement. The piece, which was originally presented in 2007, was created by Off-Leash Co-Artistic Directors Jennifer Ilse and Paul Herwig based on Jennifer's experience growing up with a brother with schizophrenia and the effects it had on her family. I couldn't help but be reminded of the 2009 Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning musical Next to Normal, about a family whose mother suffers from mental illness and the devastation that brings to everyone in the family. While there are some similarities (chaos around the dinner table), this piece gives the audience a better idea of what it's like inside the brain of a schizophrenic. It's a moving piece, beautifully performed by the 11-person cast of dancer/actors.

The play opens with a familiar family dinner scene - parents and two daughters. But there's an empty chair, and it's obvious something's off. When Maggie (Taja Will) finally comes to the table, she's obviously disturbed and has a hard time just sitting down to dinner. In one of the most effective sequences of the piece, the action then rewinds, and the scene replays from Maggie's perspective. Even the table is turned around giving us a new perspective. We see the five very different voices in Maggie's head, personified by dancers in bright clothing (as opposed to the drab grey clothing of the real people). We see exactly what Maggie is reacting to when she freaks out - things that the voices are telling her. The family keeps talking about their day, oblivious to what's going on inside Maggie's brain.

Maggie tries to keep her voices at bay with orange tape, which they seem to stay behind. Maggie dances solo and free in the middle of the stage as the voices stay at the perimeter, until the tape no longer works and they break through. Maggie is hospitalized, and her relationship with her therapist is expressed only through dance, first with the two of them going in opposite directions, then pushing and pulling, and finally dancing together. Maggie's voices are still with her in the hospital, but they're quieter and they all move in harmony together (representing the fact that some schizophrenics continue to have symptoms even as their disease is treated, but at a controllable level). In the final scene of the piece, Maggie's family visits, after first going through a chaotic dance of their own, as each family member of a schizophrenic has their own journey to go through. There's a feeling of hope at the end, that perhaps Maggie and her family can heal and lead healthy normal lives.

I really admire artists who bring their personal truths to their work; it often leads to the most moving and real theater. That's definitely the case here. Jennifer has let her personal experiences with schizophrenia inspire her to create a beautiful piece of art that will hopefully inspire and educate about the topic of mental illness. This is a short one-weekend-only run, with just two remaining performances.

"Psst!" by off-leash area at the Cowles Center

The Ivey Awards are the Twin Cities version of the Tonys. But not only do they hand out big shiny awards to certain artists, productions, or companies, they also celebrate the rich and diverse theater community in Minnesota. One performance at last year's awards show was this: "A truly bizarre and wonderful little scene from Psst! by off-leash area, a strange little workplace romance in which the actors wear not just masks, but full animal heads." This production won an Ivey Award a few year prior, and this weekend off-leash area is reviving the show at the Cowles Center for three performances only. I was lucky enough to attend opening night and experience the full show that I got a taste of last fall. It's not like most theater I attend, which I find refreshing. Psst! combines theater, dance, mask work, music, and painting to tell a story without words. It's a series of "vaudevillian vignettes," some of which are charming, some odd, some funny, some heartbreaking, some creepy, some sweet, but all of it interesting and creative.

It turns out this "strange little workplace romance" is just a part of the larger story. We follow our two main characters, identified as Janitor and Secretary (embodied by off-leash's Artistic Directors Paul Herwig and Jennifer Ilse, who also created the show), in a typical day. They wake up in the morning and get dressed just like all of us, accept that they have the over-sized heads of cartoon animals. We follow them as they travel to work (on stilts!), go about their jobs, take a lunch break, and fall in love. Their lovely frolic in the park is interrupted by Death, in a scary scull mask, who takes the secretary away. Janitor attempts to follow to the other side and bring her back, but has anyone ever been successful in that attempt, even in art?

Besides our two main characters, an ensemble of ten actors in masks populates this black and white cartoon world (the look and characters are inspired by Norwegian graphic novelist JASON). Because the actors don't have words or facial expressions to rely on, they convey emotions through deliberate, exaggerated movements. The masks (also made by Paul) are expressive but in a sort of blank way, so that they take on the emotion of the actor's body. The set pieces are charmingly simplistic, as if they've been lightly sketched on white paper (sometimes in real time). Inventive theater tricks are employed, such as thought bubbles above characters' heads with a shadow puppet representing their thoughts, and an impressively long scroll backdrop as Janitor falls into the underworld. All of these elements combine to tell a full and complete story without a single word spoken.

Psst! has two performances remaining at the Cowles Center. Check it out if you're looking for something creative, inventive, charming, and a little odd.

the Janitor and Secretary fall in love in the park