by ANNA ROSENSWEIG The Penumbra Theatre is currently reprising its I Wish You Love, an exploration of Nat King Cole’s life, music, and times, after a highly successful world premiere in St. Paul last spring (2011) and a subsequent engagement at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Set at the NBC studios, which somewhat ambivalently…
by SOPHIE KERMAN When going to see a play about a group of teenagers out to expose a sex scandal involving a teacher, what do you expect to see? A heartwarming tale about finding social acceptance in surprising places? Or a sad story about the fallout of a traumatic and coercive relationship? No matter what your…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Over the past few days, Anna and I have explored the three very different plays on offer at the Mixed Blood Theatre‘s Center of the Margins festival, which celebrates the often-neglected perspectives of individuals with disabilities. We have to commend the Mixed Blood for undertaking such a project to begin with: there…
by ANNA ROSENSWEIG For the the third play in its Center of the Margins festival, the Mixed Blood Theatre Company offers the world premiere of On the Spectrum, an encounter between two young adults who live with different degrees of autism. Written by Ken LaZebnick and directed by Jack Reuler (Mixed Blood’s founder and artistic…
by ANNA ROSENSWEIG Mixed Blood opened its Center of the Margins festival over the weekend, which features three plays that explore “the complex world of disability.” Staging these plays together thankfully avoids making any one stand for a supposedly universal experience of disability, and wards off the impression that there’s an ideal way to represent…
by SOPHIE KERMAN The Center of the Margins festival at the Mixed Blood Theatre has the admirable mission of producing plays involving populations that we don’t often see on stage. My Secret Language of Wishes, the second play to premiere as part of the festival, centers around a seventeen-year-old girl with cerebral palsy and the women who,…
Want to see this phenomenal world premiere but feeling broke? The Minnesota Opera has kindly offered a special $20 ticket rate for our readers for the performance on Tuesday, November 15! Here’s the details: Limit up to 4 seats regularly priced $50- $110. Online: Enter blog20 and click “Add Coupon”. You will see your savings applied. Do…
by SOPHIE KERMAN The Minnesota Opera‘s world premiere production of Silent Night – opening this Saturday for a limited run at the Ordway – fights both an artistic and an ideological battle. First, it takes a stand for the continued relevance and importance of new opera. Second, it makes the case that some of the most effective anti-war arguments…
by SOPHIE KERMAN & ANNA ROSENSWEIG Something about the transition from fall to winter – the impending gloom that is just around the corner – has made the local theater scene shift from playful and speculative to downright brutal. Two adaptations of Greek tragedies opened this past weekend – and not just any Greek tragedies,…
by ANNA ROSENSWEIG When asked by her mother if she’d ever marry, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf answered that she didn’t need to. She was and would always be her own wife. Von Mahlsdorf’s response to her mother can in part be explained by her decision to live as a woman. Born male as Lothar Berfelde in…
