by MICHAEL J. OPPERMAN Keri Alkema as Anna Bolena in the Minnesota Opera production of “Anna Bolena” Anyone with a glancing knowledge of British history knows all does not end well for Anne Boleyn. Anne was Henry VIII’s second wife (“divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived”), and, after specious charges of adultery and treason, spent…
by MIRA REINBERG Living in Western countries generally implies having access to a vast array of media venues that provide an abundance of uncensored and updated news. Journalism is charged with the sacred task of unveiling democracy’s biggest enemy: collaboration of institutions in repressing crime, corruption, and injustice. It is not at all certain that…
by SOPHIE KERMAN As the opening to the MORPHOLOGIES Queer Performance Festival, Scott Turner Schofield‘s Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps is a perfect balance of art and storytelling. The three companies organizing MORPHOLOGIES – Pangea World Theater, 20% Theatre Company, and RARE Productions – have spent the last two years putting together the festival, which aims to celebrate…
by SOPHIE KERMAN The process of getting to the Loring Alley Theatre last night was long and circuitous. The space – a chilly concrete room also used as an indoor skateboard park, when not as a theater – is tucked away in the alley behind Joe’s Garage and Lurcat, and my friend and I walked past…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Kill Me Don’t Go, a brand new play by Trista Baldwin, does not shy away from marriage’s most harrowing moments. Ambitious in its emotional scope, Kill Me explores the profound connection and dangerous interdependency that can develop between two people who have chosen to wind their lives around each other. Although the situation between…
by MIRA REINBERG That the vibrator gained wide and accepted usage to treat hysteria in women during what is considered one of the most demure of social ages – Victorian times, is a historical reality brimming with irony and asking to be dramatized in theatre. Playwright Sarah Ruhl put history into literary action in In…
By MIRA REINBERG “Why are wicked men such good company?” This question, asked in The Lives of the Most Notorious Highwaymen by Six Elements Theatre playing at Gremlin Theatre, has clearly attracted playwright John Heimbuch, who has offered us a tale that does much more than provide an answer. Early eighteenth-century London is the setting…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Any attempt at writing a play about genocide is immediately plagued by a host of ethical problems. In representing an individual’s testimony on stage, the playwright risks co-opting the voice of the victim or trivializing a traumatic experience in order to gain an emotional response from the audience. And yet taking too…
by SOPHIE KERMAN You can always rely on the Sandbox Theatre, with its years-long play development process, to present something new, challenging, and seamlessly executed. Beatnik Giselle, performed for just one weekend at the Southern Theater, tackles heavy questions of sexuality and self-expression through a framework of dance, music, and Beat poetry: not a traditional piece of…
by MICHAEL J. OPPERMAN The funny I expected, the poignancy I didn’t. 2 Sugars, Room for Cream is a surprisingly moving collection of comic vignettes draped over incidental meetings with coffee, and some harder stuff here and there (“I keep a spare in the trunk” does not refer to a tire). Written and performed by…
Aisle Say - Twin Cities 