Fringe 2025 - Returning Favorites - Aethem Theatre (Kayla Hambek) - Grief, It’s What’s For Dinner

This is an odd one because back in 2022 when this artist was on my pre-Fringe Top 20 list, the show didn’t happen, due to illness among the company, I think.

So this one’s kind of a mulligan.

Grief, It’s What’s For Dinner
Venue: Open Eye Theatre
Show description:
Grief is hard. Trying to process it alone is even harder. While Kate's mom slowly slips away from Alzheimer's, Kate seeks hope and connection from her sibling, her therapist, Support Group Guy...and puppets?
Genre & Content: Comedy, Drama, Puppets

Oddly enough, there was another show at Open Eye in last year’s Fringe that was also about a dying family member that included extensive use of puppets - Teen Wolf Killed My Grandma (which I was looking forward to, and quite liked)

But Matthew, you say, do you really want to see a Fringe show about a dying mother figure?

Good point.  But it’s local playwright Kayla Hambek, whose play “The Dragonflies” was featured in the first round of Threshold Theater’s New Play Reading Series, back when we first started and things were all still being done online.

I’d like to get a shot at seeing her work up on stage, more fully realized, in person.  So I’m giving this one a shot.  Also, we’re being promised (or warned about) “Adult language, Crude Humor, and Mental illness” - with puppets!

The More Information tab and additional press info provide further context:

Based on a true story.  A very recent true story.  We hope you laugh, cry, and remember your loved ones with us.

Grief is hard. Trying to process it over a decade is even harder. In 2015, Playwright Kayla Hambek learned her mother was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's at the unheard-of age of fifty-three. As she watched her mom's slow decline, Kayla struggled to separate fact from fiction about the disease, support her family, and face her fears about her own future. In Grief, It's What's For Dinner, Kate (totally not Kayla) fights her own anxieties in the form of handmade puppets and seeks hope and connection from the humans in her life - her sibling, her support group, and ultimately her mom.

Let’s give this another shot, shall we?

(Oh, and flying in the face of the comedy guideline "don't explain a joke," if the title doesn't ring a bell, it took me a minute, but there was a meat industry ad campaign back in the day (still cranking along on the internet), touting "Beef, It's What's For Dinner" - so just a bit of rhyming humor there :)

 

Here’s some handy links to my Fringe Top 10, Top 11 to 20 and Returning Favorites lists for this year, as well as all the coverage of this year’s Minnesota Fringe Festival.