by Rebecca Halat and Adam Schenck Illusion Theater’s Right Wrong or Bomb! A Dating Musical explores the contemporary (read: online) dating scene. How many of us aren’t familiar with the daunting process of searching through hundreds of photos and descriptions in an attempt to find one–just one!–other human being with enough attractiveness and a tolerable…
Becoming Dr. Ruth: In Life and Sex, You’ve Got to Finish By Rebecca Halat and Adam M. Schenck The Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company’s production of Becoming Dr. Ruth traces the story of the internationally-known sex therapist Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer from her youth in Nazi Germany to how we know her today. Youthful actress…
by Adam M. Schenck Our lives have seasons, and the Bard himself tells us that “All the world’s a stage.” And as Aristotle teaches us in his Poetics, catharsis is the purgation of our emotions via the experience of tragedy. That’s three big concepts, but I want to answer a simple question: What is the…
by Adam M. Schenck Part of growing up in our country as a late adolescent is reading what is called classic American literature. The teacher tells the sixth- through ninth-graders, “This is important! This matters!” But children at that age do not have a reference for what is important. Like you perhaps, my first interaction…
[Trigger warning: sexual abuse, rape] by Rebecca Halat The Illusion Theater’s production of Lee Blessing’s For the Loyal explores truth, consequences, and obligations. The narrative is based on the real-life events of the Penn State-Jerry Sandusky child rape scandal, but avoids falling into the trap of simply re-telling that narrative. The play begins by exploring…
by Adam M. Schenck Have you ever been sitting there in the audience, Live Theatre Goer, and wondered, “Why are there so few people here and so many people at home watching television?” Well, this critic has had that thought, and let me say that I can’t recall having a solid belly laugh at a…
by Rebecca Halat As a youth, Beauty and the Beast was one of my favorite movies, so the child in me was very excited to be able to see the Orpheum’s production, bringing my old memories to the stage. This performance certainly matched my expectations, and I was reminded of what a pleasure it is…
By Rebecca Halat and Adam Schenck Even before the film Selma, and before President Obama’s return to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in that Alabama town, we all knew the story of Martin Luther King, Jr. Many of us even know that the heroic orator’s persona has been sanitized to quell our worries about race and…
Aisle Say - Twin Cities 