Sunday Blog post

 This week I wrote a lot of jokes  I got a lot of ideas last Tuesday about a rideshare client .I walked at least 3 miles every day and it’s been doing great for my health, including restful evenings at night and managing my health and my energy. 

I did all the walking between giving ride shares.And made a lot of (what smelled like) Weed deliveries.📦 Not sure how rideshare justifies this but it is what it is 😏Its been tapering off from 80° weather in Minnesota and we’ve finally reached the 60s this week. 

We have an upcoming performance at Eat Street crossings on Tuesday OcT 20th at 5:30 

and had a med training class on Wednesday .

A Review: Wonderlust Productions’ A Star Full of Skies

 

               Photo by Dan Norman

I saw Wonderlust Productions’ A Star Full of Skies: The Values Play Experience at the Frey Theater at St. Catherine University in St. Paul. The production is a reimagining of Euripides’ The Bacchae, built from stories gathered from more than 300 people across Minnesota. It explores political division, freedom, order and community through an interactive format in which the audience helps determine which scenes are performed. Rather than simply watching the characters debate questions of democracy, the audience becomes part of the process of making collective choices.

I came to the play wanting to see a more visual, staged version of an idea that had already been interesting me. After reading Patrick House’s Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness, a book that examines consciousness through multiple perspectives rather than trying to give one definitive explanation, I became fascinated by the possibility of looking at something in different ways. I went into the play thinking about perspective as something individual—how each person might experience or understand the same thing differently. But the play approached perspective differently. Instead of exploring each audience member’s individual point of view, it turned our choices into a collective decision.

We received laminated sheets with roughly 15 different scenes or scenarios and were repeatedly asked to vote on what would happen next. The actors guided us through the process, which was helpful because this was not a conventional play where I could simply sit back and watch the story unfold. Sometimes the voting was straightforward; other times, when there wasn't a clear choice, the actors combined multiple scenes. We shouted out our selections, which gave the experience a genuine feeling of autonomy but could also become chaotic.

That sense of autonomy became the most interesting part of the experience for me. During the first half, I became accustomed to having my choice immediately affect what happened onstage. Then the second half changed the rules. We could put away our laminated sheets, and instead of immediately determining what scene came next, our choices were being analyzed. I almost expected the voting to continue. The play had established one relationship with its audience and then changed it.

In that sense, the production partly answered what I had been hoping to see. Multiple perspectives weren't just discussed; they were physically enacted through different scenes and through the audience's participation. Yet it also didn't quite give me the single visual concept I had imagined. The many possible scenes meant that I became much more familiar with some characters and storylines than others, and at times I felt disoriented about how everything fit together.

The production's minimal set—a tree and blocks—left much of the setting to our imagination. The largely tan costumes created a visual unity among the characters, while occasional jackets and other added garments helped distinguish them. The use of armor and bulletproof vests also gave a physical presence to the play's themes of conflict, shame, rage and power.

I appreciated that the actors were willing to guide us through an unfamiliar format, and I liked experiencing a play in which the audience had an unusual amount of influence. I went in expecting something closer to different perspectives on one central story. Instead, I encountered a fragmented, interactive experience that asked me to participate in building the story itself. It didn't completely give me the visual version of multiple perspectives I had imagined, but it did make me think more deeply about what happens when we stop looking for one version of a story and start considering the many ways it can be understood.

Sunday blog post

 

Happy October!!

This month is already off to the races..

 On Tuesday, I had another dentist appointment. This was my second week in a row going to the dentist.

On Thursday, I went to work.

On Friday, one of our clients bought us Culver’s while we were at work. That evening, I went to Whitey’s to watch stand-up comedy. 🎤

On Saturday, I went to St. Catherine University to see Wonderlust. 🎭 I love seeing shows because it gives me a deadline to write reviews, and I love deadlines because they keep me motivated.

Earlier in the week, on Tuesday, September 29, we had our Next Slide, Please show at Eat Street Crossing in Minneapolis. 🎬 We did our slideshow karaoke, and it was quite a success. We had a good audience, and it was exciting to look out and see so many people there. Afterward, we started talking about all the possibilities for how we could continue with the show. It made me excited about what we are building and what it could eventually become. we also have a show October 20th at 5:30pm at the same location.

It is exciting to think about how many shows we have coming up. There are going to be so many opportunities to meet other comedians and people involved in the comedy community. I have been thinking about how we can meet more people and what kinds of opportunities could come from all of these shows. There is something really exciting about realizing that there are so many people out there that I haven't met yet.

I also picked up The It Girl by Ruth Ware at Half Price Books. 📚 The mobile library also came to our building, so I have been accumulating books from several different places.

I love fall, and I have been feeling a lot of energy lately. I like going to autumn events and having things to look forward to, and right now there seem to be a lot of things happening.

Tomorrow is my birthday, and my son and I are going shopping. 🎂 I am looking forward to spending the day with 

Wife of a Salesman, Girl Friday Productions at Gremlin Theatre

Girl Friday Productions returns under new leadership with Eleanor Burgess’s Wife of a Salesman, directed by Megan K. Pence. The Twin Cities premiere is playing at Gremlin Theatre in St. Paul through October 4.

The play takes us back to the world of Death of a Salesman, but this time the women are at the center. A wife tracks down the woman who is having an affair with her husband, and the two women are forced into a conversation that goes beyond the affair itself. The play looks at marriage and the expectations placed on women, as well as the question of what happiness means within those expectations.

Death of a Salesman was in the back of my mind throughout the performance. That connection is part of what makes the premise interesting, but it also made me wonder how much familiarity with Miller's play affects the experience of Wife of a Salesman. The women are at the center of this story, but their connection to each other still comes through a man.

I wanted to know more about these women outside of the conflict that brought them together. I understood why they were there and what they were arguing about, but I was curious about who they were before this confrontation. What were their lives like outside of being someone's wife or someone's mistress? What did they want for themselves?

Mo Perry played The Wife, Hannah Steblay played The Mistress and Craig Johnson played Jim. Perry brought a stern, energetic quality to The Wife that immediately grabbed my attention. There was a forcefulness to the performance that made me sit up a little straighter and pay attention whenever Perry was onstage.

The play also moves between the historical story and a contemporary, meta-theatrical layer. At one point the action stops and the fourth wall is broken, which changed the way I was looking at what I had been watching. When the play moved into the contemporary timeline, I found myself wishing I could see a character dealing with a similar situation to the one the two women in the original story were facing. I was curious about what an affair like this might look like for women living in the present day, and how the choices surrounding it might be different.

That was one of the places where my curiosity about the play really kicked in. I wondered what it would have been like to see the historical and contemporary experiences placed more directly alongside each other. For me, that might have created an even stronger connection between the women and the questions the play raises about how much has changed for women, and how much hasn't.

That feeling was also connected to the space. Gremlin Theatre has an unusual U-shaped seating arrangement, and I've seen other productions there that used the space in ways that made me feel very aware of the actors moving around the audience. In this production, I sometimes felt more enclosed. The industrial, warehouse-like lighting added to that feeling for me.

What stayed with me most was my curiosity about the women themselves. Wife of a Salesman puts them in the middle of a story that we already know from another perspective, and I wanted to look beyond that original story and understand these women on their own terms.

Wife of a Salesman runs at Gremlin Theatre through October 4.