Photo by Barb Mclean
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This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Minnesota Fringe Festival, which has been championing new and experimental works of theater since its inception. This year has some of everything: There are tributes to legends, there are classic film spin-offs, there is meta commentary on the world of theater, and then there are the just plain weird productions.
While this list barely skims the surface of the hundred-odd shows the festival is putting on this year, from Aug. 3-13 at venues across the Twin Cities, it’s a small sampling that reflects how the local theater scene is still brimming with ideas, despite the challenges the pandemic has wrought.
20,000 Leagues Under the Telltale Heart: This literary mash-up by Wet Splat Productions seems to be throwing names like Verne, Poe, Dickens, Twain, Christian Andersen, and Kafka into an improv blender and seeing what comes out.
Baldwin's Last Fire: Created by the Black Lives Black Words International Project, this production of historical fiction follows the author and expatriate James Baldwin, who has retired to a life hiding away in France, when he unravels a murder mystery that could be his last masterpiece.
Butts in Seats: How to Get People to Attend Your Shakespeare Production by Having Musical Settings for the Lyrics in His Plays. Numerous Examples Included: Post-pandemic, what will it take to get butts in theater seats? That’s been a question on the minds of everybody involved in the theater community, with Shakespeare's famous plays being one tried-and-true reliable method of getting there. According to the production: "Shakespeare’s plays contain over 70 lyrics, but most of the original music has been lost. Here we present musical settings in styles including the Great American Songbook and glam rock."
There are a pair of intriguing one-woman tribute shows: Gilda: A Tribute to the Beloved Comedienne Gilda Radner will honor the SNL comedian and mother of modern comedy, while the ”mother of the modern environmental movement,” the conservationist Rachel Carson, is highlighted in Against the Odds: Rachel Carson and the Writing of Silent Spring.
A Girl Scout’s Guide to Exorcism: The intriguing title of this production by Melancholics Anonymous is doing a lot of work, so much so that, like the green-pea puking scene in The Exorcist, we can’t look away. Here, follow the journey of the Girl Scouts at Camp Nawakwa and what it will take for them to earn their exorcism badge.
Grindr Helpdesk: What if we could peek behind the curtain of the popular dating/hook-up app for men seeking men? This drag queen-starring musical, created by David Stillman, injects humor in the semi-fraught app, that will surely show its warts and all, as Candice helps callers with dating advice, choosing profile pics, and more.
Kill B: The Epilogue: While the idea of getting an actual Kill Bill Vol. 3 seems dead, this satirical postscript to Quentin Tarantino’s classic and bloody Kill Bill movies from Six Elements Theater promises to be thematically about “generational trauma, the manipulation of men, and the desire to be known and loved.”
Starved: The Astonishing True Story of the University of Minnesota Starvation Experiment: The what experiment?! Based on a true little-known story, after World War II, the university enlisted volunteers to study how to reintroduce food to starving people who were suffering in Europe and Asia, who first had to starve themselves.
Two Stars in the Vast Dark: What happens when a young space trucker and self-aware bio-computer meet, crossing the human and android divide? This production promises a “trans-centric sci-fi event with original music and movement” about connection across distances and differences.
