Fringe 2025 – Returning Favorites – Brad Lawrence – The Big Secret

Brad Lawrence is such a great storyteller.  I’m very happy he keeps coming back to our Fringe because I love listening to him spin a tale.  He’s also remarkably good at weaving elements of the clash between religion and “real life” into his compelling, and unexpectedly funny, solo shows.  Like another regular Fringe visitor, Les Kurkendaal-Barrett, I’m always happy to see Brad’s name appear on the schedule, and look forward to whatever story he’s got up his sleeve next.  Whether it’s The Gospel of Sherilyn Fenn (which landed him on my pre-Fringe Top 10 list back in 2016), or The Idaho Jackson Action Playset, or Life Underground, I never know what I’m in for, and I sometimes struggle to convey exactly what the experience was like, but I’m always glad I went along for the ride.  This year will be no different.
 
The Big Secret
Brad Lawrence
Venue: Rarig Arena
 
Show Description:
When Storyteller Brad Lawrence was 14, a friend in his Evangelical youth group told him a secret and made him promise to tell no one. And he didn't. After she died and he lost his faith, for over thirty years.
 
Genre & Content:
Storytelling, Religious Content, Political Content
Warnings:
Adult Language, Blood, Drug content, Sexual Content, Mental Illness, Sexual Violence, Abuse/Physical Violence, Gun/Weapon Usage, Violence, Suicidal Ideation/Self-Harm, Other Divisive Content
 
The press pitch for the show offers some more enticing (and foreboding) details:
 
At fourteen, Brad Lawrence made a promise to keep a secret for his friend Jessica, a secret that, decades later, he realizes may have contributed to her untimely death at the hands of her abusive husband. Brad and Jessica’s story begins in an Evangelical youth group, where they form an unlikely bond amid apocalyptic sermons and purity culture. Years later, Jessica was murdered and Brad’s silence, born of loyalty and habit, kept her truth locked away just as she had told it to him—until the world events forced him to confront whether he had kept her story faithfully, or if he had let secrecy warp her memory and her loss. This show tackles themes of reproductive choice, violence, murder, suicide, basically all the trigger warnings, and still finds some humor in spite of the darkness. Because a little light is needed to see our way to the truth.
 
The Fringe is always chock full of solo shows and storytelling.  It’s nice to have a surefire performer I know I’ll enjoy on the schedule, and then take a risk on some other newcomers as well over the course of the festival (after all, that’s how Brad Lawrence first crossed my path).

 

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.