by CHRISTINE SARKES Inclusiveness and gratitude were the themes of the 12th Annual Ivey Awards held last evening at the Historic State Theater, downtown Minneapolis. Theater professionals honored their own and one of ours–Star Tribune theater critic Graydon Royce–as they reached beyond the typical candidates by awarding a non-actor, costume designer Trevor Bowen, with the Emerging Artist Award. Bowen got his…
By LIZ BYRON. I was a little wary as the lights dimmed around me before Saturday’s opening of Pioneer Suite. It’s a new musical by Keith Hovis that explores the lives of three Minnesotan women in the 19th century. Why was I wary? Well, I’m always apprehensive when it comes to new musicals; there are just so many moving…
Have you ever done something without knowing why? –so asks a character in If You Don’t Weaken, and it comes at a very timely moment, for the audience may just be asking themselves why this woman is making such inexplicable, illogical decisions in her life. So is the character’s friend, for that matter. After all, why…
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 MICHAEL J. OPPERMAN “Be regular and orderly in your life, that you may be violent and original in your work.” Clive Barker Perhaps knowing that Barker is regular and orderly in life is a relief (or a consolation). After experiencing Crazyface, I’m imagining him in a rocking chair sipping tea as the sun rises,…
By LIZ BYRON In some ways it is unfortunate that Diana Son’s play Stop Kiss is as relevant today as it was when it was first performed in 1998. Fourteen years later, and it is still not unthinkable that a person be attacked and beaten for being (or even just appearing to be) LGBTQ. And yet the very…
by SOPHIE KERMAN If you’re sick and tired of Christmas spirit, it might be time for a change of pace. Director Josh Cragun‘s adaptation of Maxim Gorky‘s The Lower Depths places you in the middle of a Great Depression basement-level tenement, peeling away all of the candy-coated materialism of the holiday season to reveal what happens to people when they…
by MICHAEL J. OPPERMAN Lee Blessing’s Perilous Night is a peculiar play. There is a sensation of being pushed headlong into a combination of Octavia Butler’s time traveling race critique Kindred & Don Coscarelli‘s poignant absurdist Bubba Ho-Tep (which finds two extended care patients, who believe they are, respectively, JFK and Elvis, fighting a mummy). The…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Despite knowing and loving Kurt Vonnegut, Jr for novels like Slaughterhouse Five and Cat’s Cradle, fans should not be surprised that he was also a playwright. After all, his witty, cutting dialogue is precisely what makes his novels so readable and so incisive. In Happy Birthday, Wanda June, Vonnegut’s trademark style leaps off the page;…
by MELANIE BOWMAN When the question of marriage equality arises, solemnity prevails. The seriousness of the issue generally excludes comedy, though derision is never far from the discussion. Better (or) Worse, presented by the Freshwater Theatre Company, takes on marriage as an institution with seriousness, realism, laughter, and hope. The play is a series of short scenes…
Aisle Say - Twin Cities 