"The Adventures of a Traveling Meskwaki" by Full Circle Theater at Park Square Theatre's Andy Boss Stage

Full Circle Theater doesn't exclusively do new work, but they do a lot of new work, supporting local playwrights. Their latest is #TCTheater artist Oogie_Push's lovely new autobiographical play The Adventures of a Traveling Meskwaki. In it, she and four other actors play herself as she tells the story of her life, from childhood to the present, all connected by the theme of water. Less a straight-forward narrative story and more a collection of interrelated stories, experiences, and revelations, it feels like an epic journey that comes full circle (pardon the pun) from past to present, from water to water, to finding self and home. It's heart-warming, inspiring, and thought-provoking, as it deals with themes of grief, environmental disaster, and this country's horrific treatment of indigenous people. But the overall feeling is one of hope, community, and connection, and it might make you regard water a little differently. Join the adventure in Park Square's intimate basement thrust stage, Wednesdays through Sundays until November 24.

"Passage" by Exposed Brick Theatre and Pillsbury House + Theatre

Two theater companies are joining forces to bring us Passage by Christopher Chen, loosely based on the 1924 novel A Passage to India. The central question is: is it possible for two people to be friends when one is a citizen of a colonized country and the other is one of the colonizers? Colonization has been a part of world history for hundreds, even thousands, of years, but awareness and discussion of its injustices has never been at a higher level. This play puts a human face on the sometimes abstract issue, and places the audience squarely in the shoes of both the colonized and the colonizers. For more on how this collaboration between Exposed Brick Theatre and Pillsbury House + Theatre came to be, listen to episode 2.3 of the Twin Cities Theater Bloggers' podcast Twin Cities Theater Chat, in which my blogger friends from Minnesota Theater Love and I interview the co-directors of this piece, longtime friends and synchronized swimming teammates Signe V. Harriday (Pillsbury House's Artistic Director) and Suzy Messerole (co-Artistic Director of Exposed Brick). Then get your tickets and head to "the jewel of South Minneapolis" to see this thought-provoking and engaging play.

"Antigonick" by Full Circle Theater Company at Mixed Blood Theatre

Full Circle Theater often produces new work, but this spring they're doing one of the oldest plays in theater. Sophocles (or Sophokles) wrote Antigone a couple of millennia ago, as part of the Oedipus trilogy (you know, the guy who famously murdered his father and married his mother). But this new translation, by classics scholar Anne Carson, is probably unlike any Greek play you've ever seen, and in that way, Full Circle is continuing their tradition of producing new, inclusive, relevant work. In a talkback after the show I attended, director Martha B. Johnson noted that this play is the only one Anne wrote not on commission, and it began as a graphic novel. She called the translation "startling;" Full Circle co-Artistic Director Rick Shiomi called it "wild." But the playwright insists it's a translation not an adaptation, saying (quoted in the program), "Everything I've done in the translation is an attempt to convey a move or shock or darkening that happens in the original text. This doesn't always mean reproducing the words and sentences of the original in their same order; but a play is a collection of actions or doings, this is what needs to be rendered from Greek into English." Her translation makes this ancient play feel alive, using lyrical language composed in interesting ways. Full Circle takes an equally creative approach, adding movement, and the talented 12-person cast beautifully brings the vision to life. See this new old Antigonick at Mixed Blood Theatre now through June 4.

"The Empathy Project" by Full Circle Theater Company at Park Square Theatre

During this very long extended intermission from live performance, Full Circle Theater Company continued development of new works, including a play called The Empathy Project. They held several zoom readings, and now it's finally on stage in a full production. Having seen and appreciated the zoom version, it's wonderful to see what it has grown into in this fully staged version of the piece. Playwright Stephanie Lein Walseth interviewed 20 people across the state of Minnesota, looking for a good representation across politics, geography, and race. She asked people about their family story, their values, what empathy means to them, and their hope for the future. All of these stories are beautifully woven together, with the interviewees embodied by a talented nine-person cast, to create an inspirational tapestry of humanity that reminds us that behind all the rhetoric, we're much more similar than we thought we were. If you need a little more empathy in your life (and who doesn't right now?), see one of the few remaining performances of The Empathy Project at Park Square Theatre, closing November 21.

"The Empathy Project" streaming from Full Circle Theater

This past weekend, Full Circle Theater Company premiered a new play they've been working on for several years. Playwright and Full Circle Core Artist Stephanie Lein Walseth interviewed about 20 people around the state about empathy. She noted in a post show discussion (which followed all four showings of the recorded zoom reading) that she first had the idea for this project prior to the 2016 election, and started interviewing people about a year ago. Out of each interview, she pulled a short story, looking for moments of surprise or something that challenged our stereotypes. The stories are woven together in a structure she compared to the docu-theater style of a Laramie Project or Yellow Face, or like a story circle. The result is incredibly moving, and is well suited to the virtual format as it focuses on one person telling a story.

"Dog Act" by Fortune's Fool Theatre at Gremlin Theatre

Dog Act is a little like The Walking Dead, but with entertainers. Because even in an apocalypse (zombie or otherwise), we still need to tell our stories, and be entertained by storytelling. In Dog Act, produced by Fortune's Fool Theatre at Gremlin, a traveling performer and her dog/person try to survive in a post-apocolyptic world that, much like the TWD universe, consists of scavengers and worse, people who will stop at nothing to survive. Those are the ideas explored in this weird but oddly sweet play, well executed by the Fortune's Fool team.

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2019: "Glass & Lady M."

Day: 1

Show: 3

Title: Glass & Lady M.

Category: DRAMA / MYSTERY / PHYSICAL THEATER / LITERARY ADAPTATION / POLITICAL CONTENT / SHAKESPEARIAN ELEMENTS

By: Full Circle Theater Company

Created by: Lindsey Bushnell and Martha B. Johnson

Location: Dreamland Arts

Summary: New #TCTheater company Full Circle Theater gets Fringey with two short plays proving commentary on patriarchy and the troubling legacy of America.

Highlights: The new play Glass by Lindsey Bushnell imagines four women trapped in a room, waiting for a man to come through the glass and bring them "blessings" or "luxuries." One has apples, one is constantly sweeping, one is holding a baby, and one is obsessively applying make-up and checking her looks. In what is a pretty obvious metaphor for patriarchy, the women discuss their situation and how to get out of it, alternately chiding and supporting each other. Lady M. is a brief reimagining of Macbeth by Full Circle Co-Artistic Director Martha B. Johnson (who directs both pieces), with the bloody ambition of the Macbeths compared to the bloody ambition of America and the wake of tragedies left behind in the pursuit of "Manifest Destiny." A strong cast of four women (Alice McGlave, Charla Marie Bailey, Delinda "Oogie" Pushetonequa, and Marci Lucht) perform in both plays, fully committing to the absurdist style of the two pieces that speak to each other nicely. As an independently produced Fringe show at Dreamland Arts in St. Paul, this one is a little out of the way, but worth the 10-minute drive from the Cedar-Riverside hub to see this powerful, relevant, weird, and beautifully done new work.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

"Our House: The Capitol Play Project" by Wonderlust Productions at the Minnesota State Capitol

I've never experienced anything quite like Wonderlust Productions' Our House: The Capitol Play Project. I've been to site-specific productions before, but none that have been written specifically about that site, telling the true stories of the people who daily inhabit that site, with a cast largely made up of those people. The site in this case is our house, the people's house, the Capitol of the great state of Minnesota, and the people whose stories are told are not the famous and/or infamous politicians one usually associates with the government, but everyone who works there, performing the unglamorous day-to-day hard work of keeping the state running. After following the actors (and "real people!") around our house for two and a half hours (a building I have not stepped foot in since a barely remembered school field trip over 30 years ago), I felt both better and worse about the system that governs our lives. Our House is unabashedly sincere and optimistic about the people who work in government, but it's also harshly realistic about the inefficiencies and corruption within the system. It's a shame this is such a short run (just six sold-out* performances), and I really hope they bring it back. More impactful than any high school civics class could be, it should be required viewing for every citizen.

"Mere Trifles" by Theatre Unbound at SteppingStone Theatre

The month-long celebration of Women's History continues with Theatre Unbound's collection of four one-act plays written by women about women's stories. From a 100-year old play by a little known but important female playwright, to two new plays by local playwrights, to a play from the '90s by a nationally known playwright about to make her Broadway debut, the connecting thread of these plays is women making sometimes difficult decisions to better their lives and control their own destiny. Director Kate Powers leads the versatile six-person cast (Adam Gauger, Brian Joyce, Delinda "Oogie" Pushetonequa, Lynda Dahl, Nicole Goeden, and Pedro Juan Fonseca) through the stories, with short intros to each piece that provide interesting commentary but sometimes lead to awkward transitions. Below is a short summary/reflection on each piece.

Fringe Festival 2016: "Mother's Milk"

Day: 7

Show: 31

Title: Mother's Milk

Category: Something Different

By: Inner Voice

Created by: Katherine Engel

Location: U of M Rarig Center Xperimental

Summary: A series of short vignettes about mothers, including storytelling, scenes, and songs.

Highlights: This feels like a companion piece to The Abortion Chronicles, which tells women's real-life stories about abortion. But in this case, the focus is on the women who chose to become mothers, and the children who remember and honor them. Some pieces were written by the cast (Jody Bee, Chari Eckmann, Shea Roberts, Delinda "Oogie" Pushetonequa, and Katherine Engel), some are from other sources, all are performed with great emotion. Most of the singing takes the form of chanting and feels ancient, as do these specific and universal stories. Mother's Milk is moving and beautiful way to honor our mothers, and will most likely strike a chord with anyone who sees it.