Minnesota Fringe Festival 2026: "Bay Creek"

Day: 4

Show: 10

Title: Bay Creek

Category: Horror / Solo Show / Storytelling

By: The Miller Conspiracy

Written by: Derek Lee Miller

Location: Barker Center

Summary: A solo show about four generations of men smuggling contraband across state lines and rivers, with the help of a demon.

Highlights: I saw this show at the 2025 Twin Cities Horror Festival, and it was so good I was happy to see it on the schedule for this festival. This is a good old-fashioned ghost story, brilliantly written and performed by Derek Lee Miller. The entire show takes place in a police interrogation room (with voiceover of law enforcement by Rob Ward) in Pike County, Illinois - where Derek is actually from, and from which he takes inspiration for the stories. He plays a fourth generation drug smuggler, from the days of prohibition through the acid craze to the legalization of marijuana in Colorado but not neighboring states, creating opportunity for families like this. We hear stories of his great-grandfather, grandfather, and father - whom the police are currently looking for. He refuses to give any incriminating evidence, until the power is knocked out by the loudest thunder clap I've ever heard in a theater, that you can feel in your bones. Since he's no longer being recorded, he confesses to all sorts of crimes, which he assures the listeners can never be corroborated. The stories aren't just about drug smuggling, but contain elements of demons, ghosts, mysterious escapes, and other supernatural phenomenon. With a healthy dose of family drama and trauma thrown in. Derek embodies all of the characters in the stories, primarily sitting on a single chair next to a table strewn with papers, or standing just in front of it. Each one of these stories would be effective at a campfire, and together form a collective of great scary storytelling. Derek has constructed a fictional story from pieces of truth, which is always the best kind of story. It's a wholly engrossing 60 minutes that fly by like ten. If you're looking to add some scary to your Fringe, this is the show.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here. 

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2026: "The Quiet Piggy"

Day: 3

Show: 9

Title: The Quiet Piggy

Category: Clowning / Comedy / Drama / Improv / Physical Theater / Puppetry / Solo Show / Storytelling / Audience participation / Political content

By: Dawn Bentley

Written by: Dawn Bentley

Location: Strike Theater

Summary: A solo show from Minnesota Fringe's Executive Director, about art and politics and righteous anger.

Highlights: Self-proclaimed "not a theater person" Dawn Bentley makes her on-stage debut at the festival she's helmed for almost a decade, embodying the spirit of the festival: the Fringe is for everyone, and provides an opportunity to make adventurous art for experienced artists, first-time performer/producers, and everyone in between. In the (mostly) solo storytelling show, Dawn talks about running an arts organization during a period of fascism, when our government is attempting to quell free speech, which is what art is all about. Which is why we need art, and artists. The show is both personal (Dawn talks about changing careers multiple times, and taking up competitive running and body building in her late 30s) and political - raging against the current administration, wearing a shirt that says "Is he dead yet" (but of course not wishing violence on anyone). She illustrates her points with projections and props (my favorite is the rack of race medals), with Lucas Fanning playing the villains in a buffoonish clown style, making them extremely unlikeable (as if they weren't already), and uses music (Dawn is also a violinist, and talks about the formative music in her life) and a bit of audience participation (don't sit in the front row or on the aisles if you don't want to be accosted by the buffoon). When you're new and inexperienced at something, it's a good idea to surround yourself with people who know what they're doing (something, as she notes, the current resident of the White House said he was going to do, but instead has surrounded himself with incompetent yes-men). So Dawn enlisted Fringe vets Heather Meyer as dramaturg, and Rita Boersma and Jen Scott as co-directors (the latter also appearing onstage as the clean-up woman). With her first show, Dawn proves something she's been preaching for years, that art is for everyone and by everyone, that artists should be supported in making the art that matters to them, that all art is political, and that art is a vital and necessary part of a functioning democracy.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here. 

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2026: "1985: Relative Chaos!"

Day: 3

Show: 8

Title: 1985: Relative Chaos!

Category: Comedy / Storytelling

By: Jason Schommer

Created by: Jason Schommer with JC Lippold

Location: Strike Theater

Summary: A solo storytelling comedy show about growing up in the '80s, dysfunctional families, love and loss.

Highlights: This was my first time seeing one of Jason Schommer's shows, after enjoying his hosting of the Fringe's annual Five-Fifths fundraiser this spring. He's a very funny and endearing comedian and storyteller, and definitely strikes a Gen X chord. This show is about his family, and growing up in the '80s. In front of the most deliciously awkward family photo (see above, the story of which is hysterical), he tells us about his two siblings (one an agent of chaos, the other a tick, tick, boom) and his parents, who got divorced in 1985, one of three pivotal occurrences that made that year remarkable (and the title of this show). He tells stories from his childhood and older years, jumping around in time, with some really outrageous stories about this dysfunctional, but loving and supportive, family. Spoiler alert: both of Jason's parents died relatively young, leaving him an orphan in his 30s, which he talks about with honesty and disarming humor, for a laughter-through-tears sort of feeling. But mostly, there's a lot of laughter. The full 1980s kitchen table set on stage, which isn't used but just referenced at the end, brings a tangible feeling to the show, and brings the people he's talked about for an hour to life (I had seen, and used, the table out in the lobby earlier in the day, and noted how similar it was to my own childhood kitchen table). And as a bonus, J.C. Lippold plays keyboard and sings a few songs during the show, songs from the period or references from the stories, with some audience participation. Highly recommended for Gen Xers, or anyone with a dysfunctional family (aren't they all?).

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here. 

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2026: "A Revolution Highly Favorable"

Day: 3

Show: 7

Title: A Revolution Highly Favorable

Category: Solo Show / Spoken Word / Storytelling / Historical content / Political content

By: Maximum Verbosity

Created by: phillip andrew bennett low

Location: Strike Theater

Summary: The story of the American Revolution, with readings from contemporaneous sources, told continuously over the five performances.

Highlights: If you love history, this is the show for you. It's a dense retelling of the American Revolution using the words of those who were there, and wrote it down, in letters, published articles, songs, and other sources, including the writings of 18th Century historian David Ramsey. Fringe vet Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, dressed in period costume, goes back and forth between two lecterns, reading historical text at one, connecting original text at the other. I attended the first show which covered the beginnings of the revolution, the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party (see the More Information tab on the show page for scheduled topics for each performance). The talk of tyranny, of firing on and killing lawful protestors, of the importance of freedom of speech to a democracy, ring eerily true in 2026. But the show doesn't paint the patriots as saints, recalling the genocide of the Native peoples and the enslavement of Africans, and recounting an incident when patriots tarred and feathered a British customs agent. The narration is accompanied by a series of AI-generated images that are really quite beautiful and artistic, with geometric shapes, and haunting faces, or depictions of historical figures.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here. 

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2026: "Tech"

Day: 3

Show: 6

Title: Tech

Category: Comedy / Improv

By: Mike Fotis Productions

Created by: Mike Fotis and Cast

Location: Strike Theater

Summary: An improvised tech rehearsal for a Fringe show - different every performance!

Highlights: This is an anthology series I hope never ends. This team brought us Camp Out in 2024, about a group of friends going camping (I saw it twice), Rec League in 2025, about a group of friends playing softball, and this year we have Tech, about a group of friends putting on a show! Some of #TCTheater's best improvisors create a fully improvised 60-minute story, creating specific characters and relationships before our eyes. I have a feeling that for theater people, especially those who have done Fringe, this is very relatable. And for those of us who aren't, it's a fun peek into what the behind-the-scenes might look like, but an extreme and extremely funny version. It's a simple premise: a director (played by creator/director Mike Fotis at the performance I attended), and a tech person (Tim Hellendrung creating a character named Sergei, recently returned from "the old country"), and a group of actors (James Rone, Jim Robinson, Rita Boersma, Shanan Custer, and Bobby Gardner), rehearse scenes and figure out lighting and sound and projections for an upcoming show, which turned out to be a rom-com involving layoffs and swordplay. We also saw Dennis Curley as a keyboardist adding some underscoring, in addition to the inappropriate sound effects coming from the tech booth, and a cameo from Minnesota Fringe Office Manager Amber Bjork as herself. The play-within-the-play may be a mess, but the play is a success, establishing relationships (siblings, showmances), evoking the (slightly warped) feel of a rehearsal, switching back and forth between on-stage and off-stage drama, and just being an all-around improv delight. I attended the first performance, and it was standing room only, so you might want to make a reservation and/or get there early. 

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here. 

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2026: "Witness Loudly"

Day: 2

Show: 5

Title: Witness Loudly

Category: Drama / Solo Show / Spoken Word / Storytelling / Historical content / Political content

By: Kind Fool Theater

Created by: Kyle B. Dekker

Location: Strike Theater

Summary: A solo show about one person's experience as a neighborhood witness during Operation Metro Surge.

Highlights: Kyle Dekker is a "goddamn American hero." Not because he served in the Marines (which he joked was mostly a desk job), but because he was one of thousands of Minnesotans who took to the streets, armed with a whistle and a cell phone, when our cities were overrun by armed federal agents terrorizing neighborhoods. It's hard to believe Operation Metro Surge was six months ago, at times it feels like a bad dream, but it changed us forever, and inspired at least three Minnesota Fringe shows this year. And as Kyle explains in his show, terrorization of American citizens and legal residents by ICE has not ended, not here and definitely not around the country, it's just changed forms and become less ever-present. Kyle talks about joining his neighborhood watch group last December under the apt code name "Ginger Mountain," connected via Signal chat, and as someone who watched from the suburbs, it's fascinating to hear the about the organization that went into these groups, all over the cities, connecting strangers, creating community, protecting neighbors. Using his own photos and videos captured during that time, screen captures of social media and news stories, as well as recreation of live chats (with recorded audio of voice actors Derek Lee Miller, Allison Vincent, Jennifer D'Lynn, Quincy Anderson, and Jei Herald-Zamora), he puts us right in the middle of the action, and it's at times terrifying. But the show is also hopeful, proving that one person, when joined with others, can make a difference. The show is a little unpolished, with some technical difficulties on opening night, but it's raw and real and affecting, an excellent chronicle of that time in our community, when the world discovered just how strong Minnesotans are. And we have Kyle, and many others like him, to thank for that. He's donating all proceeds from the show to Indigenous Roots, a "community arts and activism hub" in his East Side St. Paul neighborhood (you can donate here).

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here. 

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2026: "Improvised Love Is Blind--Minnesota Fringe Edition"

Day: 2

Show: 4

Title: Improvised Love Is Blind--Minnesota Fringe Edition

Category: Comedy / Improv / Audience participation

By: DallaDanna Productions

Directed by: Michael DallaValle & Danna Sheridan

Location: Strike Theater

Summary: The title says it all - an improvised spoof of the Netflix dating show Love is Blind.

Highlights: This show is a regular at Strike, and I saw it two years ago, but at the time I had never watched the reality show it's based on. In fact I don't watch any dating reality shows, but I did break down and watch Love is Blind Season 8 last year because it featured Minneapolis residents, with some local filming. Unfortunately I had to suffer through 6 or 8 episodes of inane "pod dates" to get to the local parts (including Bryant Lake Bowl). It's a show that's ripe for mocking, and this troupe does it well. Usually they do a "season" over several shows on a weekend, but for Fringe, they're doing the whole season in under an hour. Since I've now seen the show, the setup makes a little more sense to me. First we see the awkward "blind" dates, each half of the couple on one side of a screen clutching a golden goblet (just like the show), mixing it up with different pairs of the 6-person cast (Robbie Darling, Lisa Fulton, Derek Landseidel, Olivia Wulf, and co-directors/creators Michael DallaValle and Danna Sheridan). Then the in-person meeting, then the vacationing together (location based on audience prompt), returning home to meet each other's family, and finally - the wedding. They read vows provided by the audience before the show, which are almost as ridiculous as the ones on the show, and when it comes to the pivotal question, they draw a slip of paper that says "yes" or "no" out of a bin, which adds a bit of tension. Whether you've seen the original show or not, this is a very funny and fast spoof of reality show dating (and marriage), this troupe of improvisors making it look natural, and hilarious. After watching an entire season of Love is Blind, I can tell you that the Improvised Love is Blind is much more fun, and a much better use of your time.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here. 

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2026: "Sound and Noise and Bodies"

Day: 1

Show: 3

Title: Sound and Noise and Bodies

Category: Clowning / Comedy / Drama / Improv / Original Music / Solo Show / Spoken Word / Storytelling / Audience participation / Historical content

By: Octoberdandy Productions

Created by: Jen Scott

Location: Theatre in the Round

Summary: A very personal solo show by #TCTheater artist and improvisor Jen Scott that covers some big topics with humor and charm.

Highlights: In this quirky genre-bending show (directed by Levi Weinhagen), Jen shares stories from her life and weaves in big themes about humanity and art and community. In between two-minute ukulele songs (she's been writing a song a week for years), she talks about how this music major got into theater and improv, life with her "deaf French husband," giving birth via C-section, living in Paris with a toddler, the tragic death of a child, and the challenges of marriage and life. There's something really sweet and hopeful about this show, despite the darkness of some of the subject matter. That's a credit to Jen's very charming and disarming style, as she occasionally loses her place and has to refer to her notes, which only makes the show more endearing and real. The lights darken with only a spotlight for the songs, and she's constantly surprised by where it pops up. She's frequently searching for her light, but she is the light. This show is raw, funny, deep, silly (the props!), poignant, heart-breaking, and heart-warming. It's one of those personal story solo shows that strikes something bigger, something grander, by expressing both the unbearable pain and exquisite joy of being alive.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here. 

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2026: "Chum!"

Day: 1

Show: 2

Title: Chum!

Category: Comedy / Musical Theater / Audience participation

By: Theatre Engine

Created by: Alexis Bacon & Alison Dobbins

Location: Rarig Kilburn Arena

Summary: A musical parody of the 1975 movie Jaws.

Highlights: I'm not sure I've ever seen Jaws, but now I kind of want to, although it's probably not as much fun as this musical parody is. The four-person cast, accompanied by a two-piece band (keyboard and percussion), tell the full story of the murderous shark who terrorizes a beachside resort town with humor and clever songs. MSU Mankato alums Justine Carroll Melchior as the police chief who's afraid of water, Kaitlin McInerney as the marine biologist (and the first victim), Jake McInerney as the town mayor who's more concerned with business than safety, and Jordon Oxborough as the grizzled sea captain, all have strong voices and strike just the right campy faux sincere tone. A couple of audience members are recruited before the show to play additional victims, which is fun and charming. The adorably DIY props and set pieces include the titular chum represented by an array of stuffed animals tied with a red ribbon, a boat made of two pieces of cardboard lined with blue painters tape (and a Chewy label for a nice detail), a silver shark fin hat worn by several cast members, bloody red ribbons, pool noodle spears, and a couple of beautiful sails that represent the water. It's not the Fringe without a musical parody of a familiar pop culture icon, and Chum! fits the bill quite nicely.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here. 

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2026: "The Precious Scars"

Day: 1

Show: 1

Title: The Precious Scars

Category: Drama / Storytelling / LGBTQIA+ Content

By: Applause Community Theatre

Written by: Brian Farrey-Latz

Location: Rarig Stoll Thrust

Summary: An imagined conversation between Harvey Milk and Billy Billy Sipple, a gay man who thwarted a presidential assassination attempt.

Highlights: The well-known gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk and the ex-Marine who wrestled a gun out of a potential assassin's hands and sued the publications that outed him as gay really did know each other. Did they have a conversation like this? Who knows, but it's an interesting idea and explores the conflict between being an out public figure, and maintaining a private life. This imagined conversation takes place in the back room of a gay bar, or maybe in heaven, as Billy shares his premonitions about both men's deaths. Much of the play is a great two-hander between these two fictional versions of historical characters (played by James Knight-Zappa and Derik Iverson), with the drag queen Cookie (Nora Persephone) providing a few moments of humor, and a powerful monologue about a pivotal moment from her past (from which the title is inspired). It's well staged, with some fun '70s music and fashions, and themes that still resonate 50 years late. 

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here. 

"Venus in Fur" at the Hive Collaborative

The 2012 Tony nominee for best play Venus in Fur had its regional premiere at the Jungle Theater in 2013, and to my knowledge that's the last time we've seen it in the Twin Cities (although I did see it at the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona in 2018). Until now, that is. Multi-talented #TCTheater artists and friends Hope Nordquist and Kyle Weiler, who worked together on Anything Goes at Lakeshore Players Theatre last year (Kyle directing and choreographing, Hope playing the starring role) are self-producing a limited run of this smart, funny, thorny, sexy play at The Hive Collaborative, a great space and community in which to do this sort of thing. They've enlisted fellow artists to help make this show, and the result is an extremely compelling 90 minutes - but only for three performances (the first of which was nearly sold out). Get your ticket now for August 9 or 10 if you want to see a fantastic production of this rarely done gem of a play in an intimate (read: small) space.

"In the Heights" at Artistry

This summer, Artistry is doing just the second #TCTheater production of Lin-Manuel Miranda's first musical, In the Heights (the first was the Ordway in 2017). While his most well-known musical Hamilton (currently the 16th longest running musical on Broadway, closing in on #15) is an epic story about famous people - the founding fathers - In the Heights is an intimate story about everyday people - a Latin American immigrant community in NYC's Washington Heights neighborhood. But it's epic in its own way, telling stories of home, family, community, identity, growing up, that are relatable to anyone with a home or a family or a community. Artistry's production features a fantastic local cast, and is full of energy, joy, and heart. And it's particularly wonderful to celebrate a community of immigrants right now, when our own immigrant communities are in danger. In the Heights is a love letter to the hard-working, close-knit neighborhood communities that make up NYC, that make up America. Don't miss this rare chance to see the 2008 Tony-winning best musical In the Heights - head to Bloomington between now and August 30 (extended!).