Fringe 2026 - Returning Favorites - Mermaid Productions - The Importance of Living

There’s another Fringe show making its debut at the Green Bay Fringe this coming weekend before heading back home to be part of the Minnesota Fringe Festival next month - “The Importance of Living” from Mermaid Productions.

This one actually has a trio of artists involved who have shown up on pre-Fringe Top 10 lists of mine, all of whom had shows in last year’s Fringe as well, though this year’s show is a very different one than what any of them were offering up last year - producer Ariel Pinkerton, heading up Mermaid Productions, and also one of the performers in this two person show; writer Tim Uren, also one of the performers; and director Duck Washington.  These three know how to put together a Fringe show.  Now, about that Fringe show…

Description: 
Samuel and Louise really know how to live; no morals, no regrets, no limits, no future. It's the night before their reckoning day and they've come to crack a bottle of wine, swap tales, and have a little fun.
Venue - Open Eye Theater
Content Warnings - Adult Language, Crude Humor, Violence
Genre and Content - Comedy, Drama, Horror
Ages 12 to 15 and Up

The press packet materials mention that the characters of Samuel and Louise are “based on actual historical murderers” (yikes).  Tim does love to spin a good horror yarn, both on the page and in performance.  I can imagine that he, Ariel and Duck had way too much fun in rehearsals with what I’m sure will be more than a little gallows humor.

Don’t believe me, just check out their bios:

“Ariel Pinkerton is the head, tail, and only member of Mermaid Productions, which is the handle she uses at any and all Fringe Festivals. She is also an actress, lighting designer, director and storyteller. She is Co-Artistic Director of Fortune’s Fool Theatre, Artistic Director of Mermaid Productions, Company Member of Ghoulish Delights and Community Liaison for the Minnesota Fringe. To keep herself out of trouble she is also the Co-owner of the Hard Times Cafe, a mother and step mother to three amazing children, and constant comfort to her neurotic cat.

Duck Washington has been working as a theatre artist in the Twin Cities area for over twenty five years. He is an actor, director, playwright, audio designer, educator, improvisor, and arts leader. Duck is the Executive Director for the Twin Cities Horror Festival, and is company member of Blackout Improv, Theatre Pro Rata, Dangerboat Productions and Villification Tennis. Duck is co producer of The Encyclopedia Show Minneapolis and also produces under his own company, Rouges Galley Arts.

For over 25 years, Tim Uren has been performing, writing, and directing theater at festivals and small venues in the Twin Cities. Along the way, has worked with companies such as Theatre Pro Rata, the Brave New Workshop, and Theatre in the Round. He is the founder and "Chief Ghoul" of the Ghoulish Delights theatrical company and a co-host of the Mysterious Old Radio Listening Society podcast.”

Now tell me you’re not curious to see what they’ve cooked up together?

 

 

Fringe 2026 - Returning Favorites - Kyle B. Dekker - Witness Loudly

Kyle B. Dekker is another returning Fringe storyteller that makes Strike Theater a venue worthy of multiple visits this Fringe.

Kyle’s currently at the Green Bay Fringe this coming weekend debuting his new show “Witness Loudly” that he’ll bring home to us here in the Twin Cities for our Fringe next month.  The show is (given the recent killings in broad daylight on city streets in Texas and Maine in the span of less than a week by ICE agents) sadly even more timely and relevant that it already was before the latest grim news dropped.

Description
Operation Metro Surge pitted armed ICE agents against the residents of Minnesota. Kyle B. Dekker recreates a live rapid response call on stage based on his own experiences as a constitutional observer, also  discussing the impact of the event on him and his neighbors.  
Venue – Strike Theater
Content Warnings – Adult Language, Gun/Weapon Usage, Loud Noises, Violence
Genre and Content – Solo Show, Drama, Political Content, Historical Content, Spoken Word, Storytelling
Ages 12 to 15 and Up

While Kyle was out there with his fellow citizens doing the work that needed to be done - keeping an eye on ICE patrols, making sure kids got to school and home again safely when their parents couldn’t leave the house, providing groceries and meals to people who couldn’t go outside and do their jobs to earn the paycheck to keep food on the table - Kyle was also regularly reporting on conditions during the occupation by posting updates online.  He has a hell of a lot more stories to tell than could fit in any one-hour Fringe Festival slot so I’m very curious to see how he’s crafted this tale.

One of many things I appreciate about Kyle as a Fringe performer (apart from the fact that he’s also so supportive of his fellow Fringe artists and their shows), is that he finds the humanity and ways to connect an audience to subjects he cares about and wants to share. That’s just as true of the solo show about his upbringing in a religious community (“He-Man is the Devil: A Satanic Panic Tale”) as it is when he creates a show with his son about the science of flatulence (“A Completely Serious and Not At All Comedic Review of Fart, Flatus and Flatulence, aka The Fart Show”).  “Witness Loudly” is obviously more on the serious side of that spectrum but when Kyle’s got a tale to tell, he does it well.

Bonus points if you attend (according to the More Information tab on the show page): “All proceeds from Witness Loudly will be donated to Indigenous Roots - an arts and community activism organization on the East Side of St. Paul, MN. They were essential in mutual aid and community support during Operation Metro Surge and continue to be an anchor of the East Side Community. Please consider making a donation to help them continue their mission and tell them Kyle sent you!”

[And if you want another angle on the occupation, there’s an ensemble storyteller show in this year’s Fringe as well called “Who We Are: Stories from the Surge” from the group Three Second Memory (headed up by Bruce D. Manning) that got some behind the scenes support from Fringe vet and rockstar storyteller Allison Broeren - so that also makes me curious.]

 

 

Fringe 2026 - Returning Favorites - Maximum Verbosity - A Revolution Highly Favorable

Maximum Verbosity (aka phillip andrew bennett low)'s latest production, "A Revolution Highly Favorable," is one of several good reasons to get my butt over the independent venue of Strike Theater and see some shows there again this year.

I’ve been following phillip’s storytelling ventures around the Minnesota Fringe for (yikes) over 20 year now, since his appearance at #2 on my pre-Fringe Top 10 list back in 2007 (for “Descendant of Dragons”) happened after I’d already seen two other previous Fringe outings from Maximum Verbosity - intrigued by the enjoyable but slightly messy experiment of the first in 2004 and unexpectedly blown away by the storytelling achievement of the second in 2005.

When phillip was last on the Minnesota Fringe schedule back in 2023 with “Too Many Notes,” revisiting a different story from years past in each performance - I rearranged my Fringe schedule so I could catch four out of the five (almost saw ‘em all).  If phillip’s got a story to tell, I want to hear it.

Here again, we’re getting a different part of a larger canvas with each of this year’s performances:

Description: 
On the 250th anniversary of American Independence, listen to the words of those who were there! Adapting for the first time 18th-century combat medic, historian, and POW David Ramsay, this fully AI-illustrated show features a different collection of readings each night.
Venue - Strike Theater
Content Warnings - Abuse/Physical Violence, Adult language, Gun/Weapon Usage, Loud Noises, Sexual Violence, Violence (Some evenings may contain gunshots and/or racial slurs.)
Genre and Content - Drama, Solo Show, Spoken Word, Storytelling, Historical Content, Political Content
Ages 12 to 15 and Up

The rundown:

Saturday, August 8th at 4pm: A Revolution Highly Favorable: Peaceably to Assemble. When a distant autocrat imposes a series of crippling tariffs, a peaceful protest movement is met with overwhelming force.

Sunday, August 9th at 7pm: A Revolution Highly Favorable: To Keep and Bear Arms. The first shots of the war are fired as the government attempts to seize a stockpile of contraband weapons.

Monday, August 10th at 7pm: A Revolution Highly Favorable: To Dissolve the Political Bands. Differences become irreconcilable and thirteen new states are born, achieving their first victory on a stealth mission across the Delaware.

Wednesday, August 12th at 8:30pm: A Revolution Highly Favorable: To Compleat the Works of Death. In the war's darkest hour, a southern capitol falls, and a highly-placed general betrays his commission. (NOTA BENE: this late-night show is focused on the horrors of war, and is not for the faint of heart or stomach. Seriously. I'm not kidding.)

Saturday, August 15th at 2:30pm: A Revolution Highly Favorable: To Form a More Perfect Union. The war is won, and a new nation's citizens wrestle with who will be represented in their new government.


So, depending on your mood, or historical area of interest, there’s a slice of the story for everyone.

The press packet had some thoughts on the genesis of the show:

“I'm an internationally-touring storyteller who's been out of the game for a couple of years, but couldn't resist the opportunity to produce something for the semiquincentennial. This is a weird passion project that started long before the recent political madness that threw our city into the national spotlight, but our founding myth is a story of massacres, government gone mad, and ordinary people trapped in extraordinary circumstances that became far more relevant than I ever hoped they would. We're a traumatized people trying to find a response, and mine is to plunge forward into the past.”

Now, as for the AI of it all…

You’ll be unsurprised to find that phillip has a thoughtful and amusing essay on the topic of the creative use of generative AI - that would be the link on his More Information tab entitled Confessions of a Slopaholic.

You can see an example of how he’s using the artwork in the trailer for the production:



As for the source material for the performances, “David Ramsay was a physician, legislator, and early American historian. Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he graduated from Princeton and earned a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania before settling in Charleston, South Carolina, where he introduced vaccination and served in the state legislature. During the Siege of Charleston he worked as a field surgeon and was captured when the British occupied the city, spending nearly a year imprisoned in St. Augustine, Florida. After the war he became one of the nation's first historians, while his outspoken abolitionism cost him a U.S. Senate nomination. In 1815, he was murdered by a former patient.”

And since you’ve got Ramsay’s bio, here’s phillip’s: “phillip andrew bennett low is a Chinese-American playwright and poet, storyteller and mime, theatre critic and libertarian activist. His solo performances have won acclaim from Minneapolis to Atlanta, New York to LA - even as far as Melbourne, Australia. He was the co-founder of the Rockstar Storytellers (a supergroup of bestselling Twin Cities spoken-word artists), founder and producer of the touring theatre troupe Maximum Verbosity, and founder and host of the country's only open-mic dedicated to speculative fiction, The Not-So-Silent Planet, and its associated podcast.  He has published collections of political humor, comic fantasy, and horror.

 

 

Review - The Cottage - Gremlin Theatre - Putting the Comedy Back in Romantic Comedy - 5 stars

Gremlin Theatre’s production of Sandy Rustin’s play “The Cottage” is putting the comedy back in romantic comedy.  Or perhaps it’s putting the farce back in sex farce.  The audience gets a lot of both (love and sex) but laughter is the order of the day.

“It seems we’ve all been lonely with Sylvia or without Sylvia.”

Perhaps the trickiest thing about “The Cottage” (and no, it’s not that other recent cottage of note, calm down - though that is also lovely), the tricky thing about discussing the plot of “The Cottage” is that it’s SO easy to spoil some of its funniest surprises and biggest laughs if you aren’t very careful.  So I’m going to stick quite closely to the synopsis the theater, and the playwright’s own website, use to say just enough but not too much.

“I love it when you smoke.  You look like the picture of health.”

“A romantic getaway. Multiple affairs. One tiny English cottage. What could possibly go wrong?
With a tip of the hat to Noël Coward and sex comedies of the past, this side-splitting romp is an outrageous tale of sex, betrayal, and desire set in 1920s Britain. The true meaning of fate and faith, identity and infidelity, love and marriage are all called into question as a surprising and hilarious web of secrets unravels in this ridiculously funny, potentially murderous, uncharacteristically feminist romantic comedy.  Sylvia Van Kipness (here played by Sarah Malaria) sets the whole thing in motion when she decides to expose her love affair to her husband Clarke (Corey DiNardo) and her lover Beau (Sasha Andreev)’s wife Marjorie (Shana Eisenberg).”

Rounding out the mismatched couples are two other visitors to the cottage, arriving for reasons I won’t spoil, Dierdre (Mira Davis) and her jealous husband Richard (Chance Carroll).

“It’s impossible to rip a man’s heart out with a teaspoon.”
“You said it was serrated!”

Half the fun of watching the antics of “The Cottage” unfold is the almost dizzying way in which all the characters become increasingly interconnected throughout the whole of the first act and on into the second act as one new person after another comes knocking at the cottage’s front door.  Even though the play is new and only just recently had its run on Broadway back in 2023, the style of dialogue and performance is very of the period reminding me not only of Noel Coward, but also screwball comedies of the early 20th century like “Bringing Up Baby” or the wisecracking detective couple Nick and Nora Charles in “The Thin Man” movie series.  Kudos to dialect coach Keely Wolter for helping everyone achieve that arch, old-timey comedy style.  Everyone’s got a sharp wit here and is willing to use it, though the production is also not above drunken escapades or unexpected farts.  High brow and low brow humor live in harmony in “The Cottage” and they’re both equally entertaining.

“Just as a left you… gorgeous.”

Director Brian Balcom puts his clever, very funny cast through their paces, running in and out of all corners of Carl Schoenborn’s multi-level set with its many doorways and windows (and window seats), not to mention the larger Gremlin Theatre itself.  It’a a great use of the space.  Schoenborn also took on the lighting design, making sure everything’s just as bright and sparkling as the dialogue.  The whole design team is populated with Gremlin Theatre regulars so the period feel of the piece is reinforced by Aaron Newman’s sound design choices as well as A. Emily Heaney having a ball with the costume design outfitting everyone in period threads (and lingerie). Prop designer Sarah Bauer outdoes herself with everything from the doilies to the candlestick phone and the old Victrola record player.  My theatergoing companion also outdid themselves by noting a framed picture of Emily Dickinson hung on the cottage wall and then later noting, as we took stock prior to the performance beginning of all the clothes strewn about the floor and the “delicates” draped over the staircase railing, “Well, Dickinson did once say that ‘Hope is a thong with feathers.’”  Stage manager Kathryn Fritz is new to the Gremlin but keeps all these plates spinning as they need to in order to keep the comedy on track from start to finish.

“Funny how the brink of death brings out the sentimental side of men.”

One of the many things I enjoyed about “The Cottage” is that it’s not at all what it first appears to be.  Given my unconscious cultural conditioning, my brain was expecting for the play to revolve around Beau, the husband cheating on his wife.  And I was surprised to realize I had been expecting this when I found that expectation thwarted, over and over again, by the reality that the play, and all its characters, actually revolve around Sylvia instead.  And in the rare moments when it’s not revolving around Sylvia, the story leans more toward Marjorie or Dierdre than it ever does to Beau, Clarke or Richard (who are, each in their own way, quite ridiculous men).  When the playwright describes her own play as “uncharacteristically feminist,” she’s not kidding.  That said, it’s not a play that beats you over a head with a message.  It’s too silly for that.  It’s just the lens through which the story is framed, which continues to fascinate me as I type this.

“I’ve dreamt of this moment.  Well, not this moment exactly…”

“The Cottage” is just a really fun time.  I don’t want to spoil any of the fun so just go see it for yourselves.  But make your reservations. They were completely sold out opening night, which is a rare thing to see at a theater these days, but a most welcome sight.  If you need a break from… well, everything going on right now… Gremlin Theatre is a place where you can dependably find a whole evening full of laughs.

“You said last night you love it when I take charge.”
“Context, darling.”

Sandy Rustin’s “The Cottage” runs now through August 2, 2026 at Gremlin Theatre (550 Vandalia Street, Suite 177, St. Paul, MN 55114), Wednesdays through Saturdays at 7:30pm, Sundays at 3pm.  Wednesday, July 15th is a Pay What You Wish performance.  Tickets available at www.gremlintheatre.org

5 stars - Very Highly Recommended

(Photo courtesy of Gremlin Theater.  Photography by Alyssa Kristine Photography. Left to right, Sasha Andreev as Beau, and Sarah Malfara as Sylvia in “The Cottage”)

 

 

Fringe 2026 - Returning Favorites – Button Productions - Buckeroohaiku’s Reverse Armando

Last year, improvisor (and apparently relentless organizer) Ryan Klima was in the #11 spot on my pre-Fringe Top 20 for a pair of improv comedy shows, one with his duo Comfort Zone called “Chemistry” and another 5-star show centered around the improv game of “Ping Prov.” 

This year he’s back again, this time pairing up with storyteller Kate Button and an army of improvisors for another experiment based on the practice of taking the raw material of someone else’s story and then putting it through an improv blender to create comedy.  Per the press packet and the show pages More Information tab on the Fringe site: 

“A unique storytelling/improv mash-up! A wild and crazy life paired with amazing improvisors.

Button Productions is proud to announce the debut of Buckeroohaiku's Reverse Armando, a unique performance series that blends raw, personal storytelling with the Twin Cities’ premier improv comedy. In each performance, local storyteller Kate Button shares snapshots from a life that spans six continents and dozens of roles: from railroad worker to co-parent of nine (including five children adopted from China, Liberia, and Florida). With refreshing honesty, Kate navigates themes of world travel, "disastrous" marriages, and living with ADHD and chronic depression. Following each story, a rotating cast of the Twin Cities' finest improvisors will take the stage to riff on Kate's experiences, transforming personal history into spontaneous, high-stakes comedy. Because every show features a new theme and a different ensemble of performers, no two adventures are ever the same."I consider myself to be a citizen of the world and of time," Kate says. "This show is an invitation to join that journey. It will be hilarious, thoughtful, and deeply human."

Description
True stories. Masterful improvisation. Kate Button spills the stories, while the Twin Cities top improvisors weave them into comedy gold! Brace yourself for an evening of raw, unfiltered hilarity! 
Venue – Southern Theater
Content Warnings – Abuse/Physical Violence, Adult Language, Drug Content, Gun/Weapon Usage, Mental Illness, Sexual Content, Suicidal Ideation/Self-Harm, Other Divisive Content, No Late Seating Allowed
Genre and Content – LGBTQIA+ Content, Improv, Storytelling, Comedy, Political Content
Ages 16 and up

They’ve gathered improvisors from groups like Adorable, Local News, The Mess, The Neighborhood, One Act Survivor, and The TZ Crew, which include artists that have their own separate shows in the Fringe this year such as Jenn Scott (Sound and Noise and Bodies), Philip Simondet (The Local Music Scene) and Mike Fotis (Tech), alongside other folks who’ve created memorable Fringe shows in the past like Rita Boersma, Butch Roy, Jake Scott and James Rone, just to name a few.  The full impressive roster is on the Cast and Crew tab of their show page.

There’s just too many good artists associated with "Buckeroohaiku’s Reverse Armando" for the end result not to be good.  I’m looking forward to seeing it, and given that improv comedy is never the same twice (particularly with the way they’re switching out both content and performers), I’m probably going to end up feeling bummed out that I can’t manage to schedule myself to see it more than once.

 

 

Fringe 2026 - Returning Favorites - American School of Storytelling

 

 

 

Speaking of the American School of Storytelling venue, they’re also producing their own show with a rotating roster of storytellers, collectively called “More Better Stories” - the folks behind this venue are some of the best storytellers in town and created some very enjoyable storytelling shows in Fringes past, so whatever they’ve got on the schedule is always a returning favorite

Description: 
Storytellers Jon Carlson, Vianna Isbister, Bernadine Joselyn, Hank Roubicek - each tell three times, and Erin Ferdinand, Kory May, Christopher Nelson, Laura Packer, and Anne Wiborg do "one off's" with stories for adults.
Venue - American School of Storytelling
Content Warnings - Adult Language, Sexual Content
Genre and Content - Comedy, Drama, Solo Show, Storytelling, LGBTQIA+ Content, Political Content, Religious Content
Ages 16 and up

The press packet materials have the following extra detail:

“The American School of Storytelling is the most intimate venue in the Twin Cities and for the third year as an Independent Producer on the "fringe of the Fringe" we are offering eight storytellers from around the country sharing adult tales of love, obsession, adventure, humor and horror on our 8'x8' stage.  Railroad engineer Jon Carlson, Tennessee based Vianna Isbister, Bernadine Joselyn coming from Grand Rapids (MN) and Houston based Hank Roubicek each tell three times while Erin Ferdinand, Christopher Nelson, Laura Packer, and Anne Wiborg will do “one off’s” for this year’s More Better Stories.”

If you check out their Cast and Crew tab on their show page on the Fringe website, you can find a rundown of who’s doing what when.  Here’s a quick summary of the titles on offer:

Three performances for:
Jon Carlson - Oz-America - The contrasting energies of my work and my polity inspire me, artistically, to alchemize both MAGA rage and the rage that animates The Resistance. Not only can Imagination and Humor dance with Rage, they desire to do so for the sake of the soul's liberation and human solidarity.
Vianna Isbister - Leaking (The Wolves are Everywhere) - invites audiences into liminal spaces where shadows stir, voices linger, and imagination takes on a life of its own.
Bernadine Joselyn - War & Peace in My 20th Century Life - What’s Worth Fighting For? - Imagination and longing led her from her childhood home in a first-ring Minneapolis suburb to India, the Soviet Union (later Russia), New York City and rural Itasca County, giving up building civil society for tree planting and tending along the way.
Hank Roubicek - Learning What? - With over 4 decades of teaching, he reveals emotional truths about education, learning, and the stuff that matters most.

One shots for:
Erin Ferdinand - My Dog Died (and All I Got was This Lousy Miracle) - author of "The Ghost Dog Diaries", a collection of essays and advice about life after death and our life, in general; debuting supernatural stories
Kory May - The Exact Moment I Became Someone Else - Kory May tells stories to make sense of the world—and since the world refuses to make sense, he keeps telling them - a Moth Mainstage performer and two-time Moth GrandSlam winner.
Christopher Nelson - Growing Up Small in a Mid-Sized Town - Come learn how balled-up socks, radishes and cow eyeballs are about the same size, but which one is good for throwing in self defense?
Laura Packer - Mermaids, Monsters, and Mysterious Strangers: Stories of the Unknown and Unexpected - Not everything can be explained. Not all strangers are who they seem. Not every monster is what you expect.
Annie Wiborg - Tell Me Again - Her days are full of reading, friends, family, volunteering, walking the dog, camping, working out – while frequently eavesdropping - at the gym.


One of the things I regret not doing in last year’s festival is getting out to the American School of Storytelling and taking in a show in this new-ish venue.  I’ll be trying to rectify that error this year - and there are even more promising presentations out there this time to make it worth a trip.

 

 

Fringe 2026 - Returning Favorites - Ben San Del - Apologies for the Late Reply

Ben has a video short that makes the case for his comedy in less than a minute much better than I could by just typing the words “Trust me, Ben is a very funny guy” so just quick watch that here.

Ben took his new show “Apologies for the Late Reply” out for a test run at the Kansas City Fringe last year and ended up winning the Best of Venue encore performance there, and now he’s bringing the show back home to Minneapolis.

Description: 
Stand-up comedy about salvaging sanity in our age of crazy presented by four-time Minnesota Fringe encore winning producer and Acme Comedy Co.'s Funniest Person in the Twin Cities title holder Ben San Del.
Venue - American School of Storytelling
Content Warnings - Adult language, Crude Humor, Mental Illness, Suicidal ideation/Self-harm
Genre and Content - Comedy, Solo Show
Ages 16 and Up

According to the press materials, Ben’s been on a bit of a journey since we last saw him at the Minnesota Fringe Festival back in 2017 (haven’t we all? and if you haven’t, good for you I guess :)  As usual, Ben makes a better, more amusing, case for himself than I ever could, so I’ll just step aside:

“Floundering to hold himself together as the world falls apart, a four-time Minnesota Fringe Festival encore winner returns to the Minnesota Fringe Festival for the first time in nine years with a stand-up comedy show about maintaining mental health as so much chaos closing in.

After 12 years in the scene, Ben San Del walked away from stand-up comedy in 2018. Untreated anxiety, ADHD, and depression had taken their toll. Touring as a stand-up comedian was only making things worse. After quitting comedy to salvage his sanity, Ben found a job that provided health insurance and got himself some therapy and medications and started to get better. During the 2024 election season, Ben recognized the same signs of anxiety, executive dysfunction, and depression that he had been experiencing becoming increasingly common among the general population, particularly people whose mental health had been perfectly stable up to that point.

After seven years away, he decided to return to stand-up comedy and focus specifically on making people laugh about and amid the exhausting chaos and dark absurdity of post-Covid life. But with fart jokes. For Ben, for the first time ever, stand-up comedy became a salve for poor mental health, not a contributor to it. With this new mindset, Ben built an hour of material that he felt would be perfect for a Fringe Festival audience at this moment in time, and was determined to produce a show even if the Fringe lottery did not smile upon him. 

This will be Ben San Del's 10th MN Fringe show, the first in nearly decade, and very first show produced as an independent producer. San Del is a past winner of Acme Comedy Co.’s Funniest Person in the Twin Cities contest. He has opened for Tig Notaro, Maria Bamford, Emo Phillips, and Ali Wong, among dozens of other national headliners. His one-person show "Spec" won "Best Storytelling Performance" by audience vote at the 2017 Victoria, Canada, Fringe Festival, and he's a four-time winner of a bonus encore performance at the Minnesota Fringe Festival, where he has previously produced and directed three plays and three stand-up comedy performances. For the last two years, he has taught "Stand-up Comedy for Beginners" for Minneapolis Community Education.

Oh, also, Ben's very sorry it took him so long to respond to your email and/or text and/or Teams message and/or Signal chat, and/or social media outreach, and/or all of the above. He foolishly allowed himself to get distracted by the impending collapse of civilization. It won't happen again. Until it does.”

If you really need more convincing to get out to the American School of Storytelling and see a show at an independent venue, here’s a link to a post with links to all my five-star reviews of all of Ben’s previous Fringe shows, whether he was doing stand-up himself or writing a hilarious play for other people to perform.

Ben was on my pre-Fringe Top 10 list all the way back in 2006 with his very first stand-up show at the Fringe, “Mittens for Fat Kids” and I’ve returned to his Fringe shows every year since because Ben’a an astute observer of the absurdity of every day life, and there’s a lot of that to go around these days.  Might as well take a break for an hour, sit down and laugh about it all.  Ben’s got you covered.  I’m very glad he’s back.

 

 

Fringe 2026 - Returning Favorites - Third Space Theater - Be Not Afraid

Third Space Theater is yet another example of why it’s so important to find the right collaborators.

When Alex Church (pre theater company name) landed at #3 on my pre-Fringe Top 10 List back in 2023, the mix of artists he was working with was… problematic, shall we say.  A lot of behind the scenes upheaval, leading to a performer leaving in the middle of the run during the festival so… yikes.  Really the less said the better for all concerned.  But what a wild upward trajectory from there over the next two Minnesota Fringe Festival seasons.

Alex bounced right back the next year with “Dutch: Made In America,” the darkest of absurdist comedies meditating on the forces that shaped the young actor who would one day grow up to be President Ronald Reagan.  It was a great gathering of fellow artists bringing the new script to life.

And then last year, under the banner of Third Space Theater, the right group of folks came together and created the unsettling seafaring adventure “Breach,” packing in the crowds through enthusiastic word of mouth around the Fringe, and getting both the Venue Pick and Artists Pick at the Golden Lanyard Awards at the end of the festival for their efforts.  At the time I wrote: “fantastic use of TRP space, all its levels and corners, light, shadow and sound, to create a fishing vessel on a high pressure job, with weather and tempers threatening to undo the crew; great script, cast, direction; plus a giant hallucinatory monster crab - 5 stars”

Then that same group of collaborators started my 2026 theater year off right with a stellar 5-star production of Will Arbery’s wild new play “Plano.”

And now they’re back again with a new script penned by Mariabella Sorini and Alex Church, both of whom also co-wrote last year’s “Breach.”  This time it’s a land-based tale of misfortune called “Be Not Afraid” (so, of course, you should be afraid - besides, it has nearly all the content warnings so…)

Description: 
2012. A struggling farm in a northwestern North Dakota town transformed by the oil boom is given a warning. A savior is coming.
Venue - Southern Theater
Content Warnings - Abuse/Physical Violence, Adult Language, Blood, Crude Humor, Drug Content, Flashing Lights, Gun/Weapon Usage, Loud Noises, Mental Illness, Sexual Violence, Violence, Other Divisive Content
Genre and Content - Comedy, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Original Music, Physical Theater, Storytelling
Ages 16 and Up

A portion of proceeds will be donated to the Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center - learn more about them and their essential work here, https://www.miwrc.org/

The press packet also includes these nuggets of info:

“The oil boom turns a North Dakota town into a modern Sodom & Gomorra.”

Well, okay then…

“North Dakota, 2012. A struggling farm in a town transformed by the oil boom is given a warning: a savior is coming. TST's newest original work places audiences at the edge of a nightmare on the plains. A motley crew of listless men, irate locals, and desperate neighbors fight for security and autonomy in a midwestern gothic of biblical proportions. As the heat rises and hope dries up. ‘Be Not Afraid’ explores what holds us together when the world is falling apart. “

They got the band back together from “Breach” adding on some folks from “Plano” and some additional new artists of promise for this go-round.  Building on the good that has come before.

Am I a fan of horror and violence in the my entertainment diet?  Not normally.

Would I trust these people to take me there for an hour?  Absolutely.  I can balance it all out with something funny and uplifting afterward.  The Fringe has everything.  Also, “Be Not Afraid” doesn’t open until Saturday on opening weekend, so I have some time to fortify myself for a good jolt.

Third Space Theater has found its Fringe audience, so they hardly need my help, but I’m recommending them anyway.