Thursday, June 04, 2009

Shameless Plug(s) of the Day - Savage Umbrella, Kite & Mountain, King Lear

A random cross-section of new, fun, peculiar theater (present and future) that caught my eye. Check them out this weekend...

Current event for future theater

A Fringe show Cookout In The City fundraiser that leapt up the top of the pile for me was the one for Savage Umbrella's production "Love Me or Die!" It's a loose adaptation of the opera Pagliacci. The team behind it is a reunion of the crew that mounted my short play "Two Left Feet" for Commedia Beauregard's "Museum of Bad Art Plays" this January/February. I'm really looking forward to seeing them all teamed up again. Laura Leffler-McCabe and Blake Bolan are co-writing and directing, and Tera Kilbride and Bryan Grosso are part of the cast. Should be great stuff!

The fundraiser - consisting of "Eating some good food, enjoying live music, and mingling with the cast and writers of LOVE ME OR DIE!" - is this Saturday, June 6, from 3pm to 6pm at Janine's Coffeehouse in downtown Minneapolis, 119 North First Street.

Suggested donation: $10-25 - but no one turned away for lack of funds. They just "want your smiling face there." If you can't attend but want to help out anyway, you can go here

Current theater

One of my favorite local playwrights, Dan O'Neil, and partner in art and life Katie Rose McLaughlin have a piece in the Works-In-Progress series at Red Eye called...

kite&mountain

"kite&mountain is a physical and theatrical exploration of the process of the grown-up bedtime story. We seek not only to illuminate the story line and subject herself, but of how the story is found, told, and then realized. It's an exploration the narrative shifts between the tellings – the story of the girl, the story of the teller, the story of the dreamer, and the intersecting points at which the narratives collide and the sparks begin to fly."

Red Eye Theater
15 West 14th Street
Minneapolis, MN

Join us as we show this piece as part of the Redeye Theater's Works in Progress weekend!

Shows are June 4, 5, 6 at 8pm
June 7 at 7 pm

Tickets are $8.

www.redeyetheater.org

And then, just when I think I'm deathly sick of Shakespeare, along comes Bedlam Theatre and friends again with...

A 5 Company Promenade Style Dessert Theater production of
William Shakespeare’s
King Lear


(no, seriously. I'm not kidding...)

featuring

Bedlam Theatre (Mpls),
Trutheater Theater (RI),
The Nonsense Company (WI),
The (Loosely) Affliliated with Puppet Uprising Players (PA),
and Insurgent Theater (WI)

Last September, The Missoula Oblongata assembled 5 wild Do-It-Yourself companies from around the country, including Minneapolis’ Bedlam Theatre, inviting each of them to reinterpret an act of Shakespeare’s King Lear. The only rules were keep it to 20 minutes and serve a dessert.

The evening was called “Shakespeare Dessert Theater in a Secret Location”.

June 4-7th, 2009 Bedlam Theatre will host Trutheater Theater (RI), The Nonsense Company (Madison,WI), The (Loosely) Affliliated with Puppet Uprising Players (PA), and Insurgent Theater (Milwaukee, WI) in a remounted version of the production at Bedlam Theatre. Audiences will be led around the various grounds of Bedlam and served 5 different desserts while enjoying the creative experimentations of 5 radical theaters from 4 different states.

The guys at the Nonsense Company dropped a quick note to say,

"This weekend, June 4-7, Thursday through Sunday, is your only chance to see King Lear as performed by The Nonsense Company, Bedlam Theater, TruTheater theater, Puppet Uprising, and Insurgent Theater, each company delivering one act, and serving a delicious dessert to the audience therein. This project was conceived and produced by the Missoula Oblongata in Philadelphia last September -- and its mammoth success there inspired us to repeat the thang in Minneapolis here and now, new and improved.

We just saw the whole thing -- the dress rehearsal is the first time that the five theater groups have all watched each other's acts -- and I think it's time we admitted it: this show is really good. And very, very odd. And probably not repeatable unless something financially unpredictable happens. Come to the show! is what I'm trying to say here. And don't wait until the end of the weekend, because frankly there's not very many seats."

June 4-7 at 8pm
Thu, Sun $12
Fri, Sat. $15
$2 refund for alternative transportation takers
tickets available at www.bedlamtheatre.org

Just the tip of the iceberg, people, but some mighty interesting options to help fill up your weekend with entertainment (and food). Enjoy!

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