She Kills Monsters

Now let's step back even further.  The night of the last big big snowstorm of the season [March 30-31], I dragged my family over to Inver Grove Heights to see She Kills Monsters.  They had no ideas what to expect. I had only told them it was a play with a Dungeons and Dragons theme.

This was an amazing play and the community theater folks at Black Dirt did an amazing job.   The writer for this play went on to write some of the Disney animated fare and you can see why.  In a nutshell, a teenager and her parents die in a car crash.  Her older sister while going through her stuff finds a Dungeons and Dragons homebrew module that she wants to play [as a n00b to the game and role playing] so she gets a student to help her through some sessions.  While playing, she learns more about her sister than she knew while her sister was alive, including who she loved IRL, who loved her, what her sister found as shortcomings in the older sisters boyfriend [which he overcomes by joining in the game], and more.

The staging was great with wonderful fights and puppets and tricks.

This bit in the playbill amused me....I wasn't sure what to expect.

What I didn't expect was a full five-headed dragon "puppet".  That shit was amazing.  Really put the community in community theater.

Something that struck me during my reading this month, was that when I was reading this book https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56175912-the-cleveland-heights-lgbtq-sci-fi-and-fantasy-role-playing-club I realized that it was trying to be what this play was.  Trying hard and mostly failing at every single point.  If you ever want to read that book, just set it aside and go find a showing of this play instead.

When the play let out, we were in the middle of a HUGE snowstorm.  Took us over thirty minutes to get back from IGH and it was getting dicey toward the end.  Good timing on the play's part.  Another thirty minutes and we might have been in trouble.  But the family agreed it was a good night out despite the end of evening danger.

Theatre in the Round - True West

I am so behind in blogging a few things I wanted to remember I did.  Maybe that's a good sign, that I'm more involved in getting out than in worrying about getting it written down/recorded.  Although I have to say that there's no shortage of video game and television time lately that proves otherwise.

The Friday before last, Jen and I went to True West at Theatre in the Round.  For the most part, it was a two person play.  Plus small appearances by a producer and the mother.  One brother who's a screenwriter house sitting for his mother.  Another brother who's a bit of a grifter who house crashes.  Both of them have something to prove to the other and it slowly, inexorably devolves into awfulness.

Both actors were great, but real props to the guy playing the grifter-ish brother.  He really sold the whole thing.  If you've got a brother, you can intuit a deep understanding for where this play probably came from.

Apparently True West is part of a trilogy or quintopoly of plays, depending on how you look at those things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_West_(play).  I suspect you get a real immersion into dysfunctional families if you double down on Shepard and anything Shirley Jackson-like in your concurrent reading [as I am].  I recommend the play.  It's appropriate that dark precedes comedy in the genre.

The Book Club [Play]

Friday night we went to The Book Club [Play] by Karen Zacarias [directed by Shanan Custer] at Theatre in the Round.  It's their 71st season over there.  I'm glad they made it through the deepest depths of covid.

Here's the official summary, which should be free of spoilers: "Laughter and literature collide in this smart comedy. Ana lives in a letter-perfect world with an adoring husband, the perfect job and her greatest passion: Book Club. But when her cherished group becomes the focus of a documentary film, their intimate discussions about life and literature take a turn for the hilarious in front of the inescapable camera lens."

The play was very good.  All about a group of friends at a book club and the interactions that are certainly not confined to the reading.  I don't think I'm giving anything away there - it's what you'd expect out of such a play.  Definitely funnier and lighter than some of what we see over there.  A lot of laughter from the audience. And I'd say pretty older kid accessible unless you're deeply conservative.  But if you are, I'm fairly certain you're not frequenting Theatre in the Round anyway.

Props to Baily J Hess who played the "pundit" and interjected some additional humor as a variety of characters during scene changes.

Because we use the flex passes and can't make it to all the plays - life gets in the way - I throw my extras at Ming.  Here he is photo bombing Aeryn.  He was supposed to sit next to us, but Julie wanted to see this one as well so he picked up an extra ticket.  But not in time to make sure all our seats were together.

Simley One Act

Eryn wanted to go to the Simley High School One Act performance tonight, so we all headed over to check it out.  I did one acts in high school and loved them.  Way more fun than Three Acts and Musicals generally.  More story in less time with more acting (in my opinion).

They did two plays.  14 Lines was the angsty sort of play Lars (thankfully) would never allow us to put on when I was in theater.  We did humor (Fifteen Minute Hamlet) and drama (Job), but not teen focused angst.  Partially because there was a student in our competition area who wrote plays for his school based on teen drug problems and other issues.  Angst was thoroughly covered.

14 Lines was about students (and one in particular, a teen mom in Catholic school who gave her kid up for adoption) attempting to memorize Shakespeare Sonnets to present as a final assignment for a nun instructor.  There was a kid who was worried his dad would hurt him.  A valedictorian who dressed up for her lines.  A Pinky Tuscadero type.  And a genuinely dumb kid.  The main character helps the kid with dad issues get a second chance to nail his lines, but almost misses her chance.  But then, in a bit of pathetic fallacy, she shows the nun during a rain storm she's got it down pat.

The actors did a fine job, particularly as it was the non-competitive play, but injecting half a dozen 14 lines pieces from sonnets into a play gets slooooow.

This is the outside for 14 Lines

I don't have a photo from The Internet is Distract...Oh, Look, A Kitten, which is too bad.  I wanted a picture of the kid playing the personification of Facebook.  He was hilarious. And downright creepy trying to get the main character to look at kid photos and deal with friends who posted about their relationship while misusing literally.  I enjoyed the heartbroken teen who said Robert Smith of the Cure said Boys Don't Cry. Well, today, they do.

There were personifications of Amazon, Google, Wikipedia, Cat Videos, Click Bait, Angry Birds (but as "knock grandma off her rocker" with exploding pigs), Facebook, and more.  A few jokes were flat, but overall it was very funny and very well acted.  Some seasoned teen actors in the competitive play and fun to watch.

American in Paris

Last night we (my wife, Eryn, and me) went to An American in Paris at the Ordway.  It's one of my favorite musicals - despite a little of the hokey 60s musical vibe in spots that's so common to that era.  I listened to the soundtrack as I fell asleep when I was a teenager and loved the movie.  My wife was surprised at how many of the songs were familiar.

There are a couple of great reviews out there, so I'll defer to them.  They note how beautiful the sets were and I can't agree more.  The way they integrated real set pieces with video with video on set pieces with digitized art over the digital set pieces....amazing.  It didn't distract from the acting and dancing at all, but provided a very city of lights and city of art feel.

• https://patch.com/california/studiocity/american-paris-pantages-theatre
• http://triangleartsandentertainment.org/2017/01/an-american-in-paris-now-at-dpac-is-a-delightful-dance-heavy-musical-inspired-by-the-1951-film/

I wasn't sure my 14-year old would enjoy it, but she laughed out loud several times which reminded me of how smart the play is in places.  The dancing was amazing and the acting superb.  My only complaint is that Milo (played by Emily Ferranti) doesn't emerge as the character who gets everything she wants in the end.  She's clearly the best character in the play, and I still think so after 35 years.

American in Paris also fulfilled my basic rule that anything with a bicycle early in it is going to be great.