"Twin Cities Horror Festival" at the Southern Theater

The 8th annual Twin Cities Horror Festival concludes today, and surprisingly this was only my 2nd time attending. Or maybe not surprisingly; unlike my friends at Minnesota Theater Love, who love all things horror and TCHF, horror is not my thing, and Halloween is just another day to go to the theater and an excuse to buy half price candy the next day. But after spending the day at the Southern Theater yesterday, I realized that TCHF is just like a mini Minnesota Fringe Festival (drawing from the same pool of artists, with a similar structure), except that everything is a little spookier. Like Fringe it's a well run festival, but unlike Fringe you don't have to race between venues. You can just park yourself at the Southern for a few hours or a whole day. The festival concludes today with six shows, including two of the below five fantastic shows that I saw yesterday, so use that extra hour you gained to see some fun and spooky theater.

A Night at HUGE Improv Theater: "Family Dinner," KINGS, and the Bearded Company's "Chronicles"

Who couldn't use more laughter in their life? A great place to guarantee that is HUGE Improv Theater in Uptown, with shows every night except Tuesday. 'Tis the holiday* season, which brings my (and apparently may people's) favorite improv show - the utterly delightful Family Dinner. Every Friday and Saturday through the end of the year, a group of talented improvisers (nightly cast TBA from this lovely group) put on a very funny, very real (ish) production of a typical family dinner, including eating an actual dinner. It's super popular and almost always sells out, so make your reservations in advance. And while you're there, why not stay for another show or two, like I did? Friday nights include KINGS and The Bearded Company (keep reading for more on them), while Saturdays are The Mess (whom I've seen a couple of times before) and A Christmas Carol: Unscripted (I might need to go back to see this one). The full schedule (and reservations) can be found on HUGE's website.

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2018: "Book of Shadows"

Day: 10

Show: 33

Title: Book of Shadows

Category: Comedy / Dance / Drama

By: Erin Sheppard Presents

Directed by: Erin Sheppard

Location: Theatre in the Round

Summary: A series of dances pieces about witches, more specifically about a 13-year-old girl's experience and thoughts about witchcraft.

Highlights: This show is both creepy cool in the choreography (by Erin Sheppard, Regan K. Saunders, and Jessica Chad) and endearlingly sweet in Taj Ruler's confessions of a 13-year-old. Her stories of middle school life are very relatable, even if you didn't practice witchcraft. But Taj did, and kept a spell book from which she recites along with tales of teenage torment and joy. After each story/spell, we see it come to life in dance, performed by an eight-person ensemble (the choreographers along with Caroline Sable, Coralee Kaivo, Derek Meyer, Paige Siegrist, and Rhett Romsaas). There's a spell for your enemies, a love spell, and even a brief reenactment of the Salem witch trials. It's an interesting concept to explore the idea of witches both in history and legend, and through the mind of a young girl who uses witchcraft as a way to feel like she has power in a powerless time. The dances are beautiful, powerful, affecting, and funny. Watch for a follow-up at this year's Twin Cities Horror Fest.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

Fringe Festival 2017: "Sevlin & Devlin Presents: Seven Evans in Heaven"

Day: 4

Show: 18

Title: Sevlin & Devlin Presents: Seven Evans in Heaven

Category: Comedy

By: Ferrari McSpeedy Theatrical Productions

Created by: Ferrari McSpeedy Theatrical Productions

Location: Ritz Theater Studio

Summary: A delightfully silly tale about two sisters named Evan who die, one going to heaven and one going to unheaven.

Highlights: On paper the story doesn't sound like much - two happy and close sisters die one day, one ending up in heaven and one in hell, and the one in heaven has to go get the one from hell and bring her back. Where does that even come from?! But when brought to life by the Ferrari McSpeedy gang (Anna Hickey, Erin Sheppard, Joe Bozic, John Gebretatose, Mike Fotis, Rita Boersma, Ryan Lear, and director Jason Ballweber), it's pure delight. A bunch of silly gags, fake fights with invisible weapons, cute little songs (with Ryan on ukulele), and puppets are just some of the fun elements that fill out the tale. It almost feels like some of the show is improvised but it's hard to tell, and some of the most fun moments are when the cast crack each other up. Last night's show sold out the tiny Ritz Studio space, so you'll want to make reservations in advance to see this expert exercise in comedy.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

Minnesota Fringe Festival: Five-Fifths of Jurassic Park at the Ritz Theater

Hey theater friends, the Minnesota Fringe Festival is less than three months away! The largest unjuried theater festival in the nation begins August 3, runs for 11 days, and usually includes about 170 shows at a dozen or so venues around town. The kick-off event (after the lottery, which was held earlier this year and determined who will perform in the festival) is the annual Five-Fifths show, a fundraiser that showcases all that is wonderful about MN Fringe. The crazy brilliant people at the Fringe take a popular movie, slice it into five parts, and give each part to a company to do a Fringe-style adaptation. Then the five fifths are mashed together to make one crazy whole. It's great ridiculous fun and really gives you a taste of what the Fringe has to offer, in addition to raising money to help "adventurous artists meet adventurous audiences."

"Urinetown" by DalekoArts at the Prague Theatre

The Twin Cities theater scene is broad and deep, with over 70 professional theater companies offering a diverse array of storytelling. Most of the theater spaces are in the Cities themselves, specifically Minneapolis. But the seven-county Metro area is populous and geographically large. Why should those of us who live in the suburbs have to travel into the city to see professional theater? Fortunately there is a growing remedy to that. We have Yellow Tree Theatre in Osseo, on the Northwest side of the cities, about to enter their 9th season. And even further out, we now have DalekoArts in New Prague, founded by local theater artists Ben Thietje and Amanda White "as a way to help decentralize professional theatre in Minnesota." Approximately 46 miles from Minnesota's theater mecca Minneapolis, New Prague is on the very Southern border of the seven-county Metro area. When I was growing up very near there (just outside of the tiny town of New Market) in the '70s and '80s, it was a rural area, but has since experienced tremendous growth. While it's a bit sad to see the bucolic land of my childhood overcome with housing developments and fast food restaurants, the good news is that's a lot of people to support the arts. Judging by my first visit to see their hilarious and crisp production of Urinetown, Daleko (which means "far away" in Czech) seems to be filling that role quite nicely. Southern Metro-ans - take note!