Zafira and the Resistance Sets Out to Open Our Eyes at the Guthrie Theater’s Dowling Studio

Filsan Said, Lina Janoul, Rsha Ahmad Sharif, Noor Adwan. Photo by Bruce Silcox.

The New Arab American Theater Works production of Kathryn Haddad’s Zafira and the Resistance is a play all Twin Cities parents should take their daughters and sons to. The drama opened this last weekend in the Dowling Studio at the Guthrie Theater. The Dowling Studio is essentially a performance space that seems to function as a bridge between community and art. A space where artists can express their truths and spark communication and connections. I attended the Sunday evening performance with my daughter, a senior in high school. The play was a great conversation stimulator about issue that are happening in the world around us and what they mean and where they can lead. But also about theater itself and the role of the artist in society. That is probably the greatest thing you can take away from this show. Young and old people alike can lack an understanding of what art can do. They may believe it is simply to provide entertainment, to make them laugh or cry or be thrilled, and yes it often does all of those things. But it can also be about ideas, it can be about justice and injustice. It can hold a mirror up to society and show us who we are and who we could become. It can show us the best of ourselves and the worst. It can also show us the “other” the person who is not like us, the person who eats different foods than we do, who speaks a different language, has a different skin tone, or religious belief. While doing this, it can either play on our fears or show us the folly in them. Make no mistake, art can be used to raise us up or drag us down. When used to tear us down, it’s goal is exclusion. When it raises us up, it speaks to inclusion. Perhaps the most important aspect of art is the questions it raises and the discussions it requires. Good art can entertain or be about ideas. Great art usually does both. Great art not only moves us but makes us think as well. Zafira and the Resistance contains the DNA of great art.

The Setting is a school much like the one’s in our city. The city, much like the one we live in. The country is our own. The time, next week, next year or perhaps never. The details do not matter, what does is that it could be anywhere at anytime. It could have been 5 years ago, but it is more likely to be today. Zafira Khoury (Lina Jamoul) is a literature teacher, she brings her lunch to school everyday, she is unmarried and has cats, she is also an Arab American. The story revolves around what happens to Zafira when the country forgets the second word in her and other Arab American’s cultural identity. The play tells it’s story following two separate threads. The first follows Zafira as she experiences the rise of Xenophobia and the loss of her voice and freedoms. It begins with a lunch room discussion between Zafira and two others, their ignorance of the food she has prepared and indifference to her culture are played at first for laughs, but become increasingly more telling. The disinterest in her culture reflects what many see as “American’s” belief that our way is the only way. They are already treating her as the “other” forgetting that she is an American. She went to school here, lives here, works here, votes here. This scene and others like it help the audience, in this case a white middle class male, understand what it is like to be the “other”. The second follows the students at the school where Zafira teaches and their lesson in the dangers of blind obedience. The Great Leader (Garry Geiken) of our country is recruiting school children to join his club where they will have an important role to play in keeping America safe. As the story progresses so do the stakes and the costs. If I told you were it ended I would rob the story of some of it’s power which comes in the logical way in which we go from grounded to that could never happen. But of course it could as we are reminded in the final scene before intermission. Listen to the words spoken, they are adapted from actual quotes from our past in America.

The staging is simple, desks, chairs and cots make up the majority of the stage settings, projection is used for messages from the Great Leader. It is simple, but all that is needed to tell the story. Action is staged primarily on the main floor but use is made of an upper level in a few scenes. When this play is inevitably staged in a larger theater with actual sets I could see the use of a two story set. The majority of the first act taking place on the upper story while half of the action of the second act taking place on the lower story. All of the actors are good, several of them are very new, they all show promise. There are definitely moments when the script could have been better supported by a more seasoned cast. There are scenes where there are four characters sharing a room, those never quite build the intimacy and relationships they should. But there are also moments where the cast could have been supported by a tighter script. The character of Karmel, who prefers to be called Kelsey, played by Noor Adwan in her professional stage debut, has a scene at the end where she has to be convinced of something, the reluctance and eventual change of heart seem unsupported and need to be reworked. There are aspect that are a little too on the nose, and yet, that is also part of what makes it work. This is a difficult balance to strike and for the most part Zafira and the Resistance gets it right.

But those are quibbles as the sets and the acting or not the star of this show, that is Kathryn Haddad. She has found a structure which can support the weight of some very heavy ideas. The duel threads give the audience multiple avenues in which to find their in. We have an adult character in real world situations that we can identify with and learn through. There are young characters that younger audience members can identify with initially, and hopefully gain some understanding of how we can be gradually led astray if we get carried along with the crowd. Zafira and the Resistance is a play about the dangers inherent in a world led by hate and fear and it has found the right way in which to tell it. It is not a perfect piece, but it could be. I would not be surprised in 5 years to see Zafira and the Resistance playing on the McGuire Proscenium Stage at the Guthrie. It may seem small now and in terms of production it is, but the ideas are large and it will open up wide avenues for discussion among attendees. I cannot recommend this enough.

Zafira and the Resistance runs through October 27th, tickets can be purchased through The Guthrie Theater https://www.guthrietheater.org/shows-and-tickets/2019-2020-season/zafira-and-the-resistance/

The Rocky Horror Show Resurrects at the Park Square Theatre in St. Paul

Celena Vera Morgan, Randy Schmeling, and Hope Nordquist. (Photo by Dan Norman)

This was my second visit to Park Square Theatre in Downtown St. Paul. My first visit was just last August for the Trilogy of Agatha Christie one acts Rule of Thumb. It’s another of these theaters that has that mid-range seating capacity, more than 100 but not so large that you’d say there was really a bad seat in the house. They sell the usual nibbles in the lobby as well as a selection of drinks soft and hard, and as a nice change they offered lemonade. Both shows I’ve attended they have also had a featured cocktail designed to tie in with the show. There are plenty of dining options at hand, several of which share the same building as the theater and it’s two stages. I can personally recommend the Chili’s at the Loon Cafe, which must have a good relationship with the Theater as the manager was talking up the show to us as he showed us to our table.

Full Disclosure I’ve never seen a performance of The Rocky Horror Show before. Nor have I seen a public screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I have seen the film at home, and am aware of the basic shenanigans that take place at the perpetual midnight screenings. So I wasn’t unprepared for this performance and was ready to do my best to participate if so required. Unfortunately the Park Square Theater wasn’t as prepared as I was. I stood in line at the bar in order to purchase my participation kit, only to find out they had sold out. This struck me as extremely poor planning, or a slapdash approach to the whole participation approach. I was there with a group of 12 people none of us were able to buy kits. The theater was not near sold out. And of the decently filled theater there didn’t seem to be many who had kits. This wasn’t the final weekend of the show or even the last performance of the weekend. I’m not sure how I feel about audience participation in a live stage production, but if you are planning to encourage it, then commit to the idea. In fact rather than selling a participation pack for $5 at the bar, raise the ticket price by $5 and include it with admission. I can see where full audience participation could add something unique but the weak and sporadic approach to the interaction came more as a distraction than an enhancement.

As for the performance itself, whether you are familiar with the show or a Rocky Horror virgin you will be entertained. The show opens with the narrator played with the perfect level of camp by Ricky Morisseau and an effective lighting and makeup effect that focuses on the lips of Actress Hope Nordquist singing “Science Fiction/Double Feature” which sets the tone for what is to come. Which is a mash-up of the science fiction and horror films that played on Saturday afternoons and late at night when I was a kid and sexual boundry pushing. We then follow Brad and Janet played by Ben Lohrberg and Natalie Shaw, a newly engaged innocent couple stranded during a thunderstorm after their car breaks down they seek shelter and the use of a phone at the castle of Dr. Frank-N-Furter. What they encounter there is an exploration of nightmares, fantasies, or perhaps a combination of both depending on your personal tastes. Once inside the castle they meet Riff Raff played by Randy Schmeling and a menagerie of odd looking and behaving people. Immediately they begin to wonder what they have walked into. When they break into the iconic song and dance “The Time Warp” Brad and Janet have decided it’s time to take their leave. Before they can leave Gracie Anderson appears as Dr. Frank-N-Furter the “Sweet transvestite from Transsexual Transylvania.” They are then ushered up to the Dr.’s lab and out of their wet clothes where they will meet Rocky Horror played by Rush Benson, the blonde haired bikini briefed Adonis that is the Doctors latest creation . Thus begins the transformation of straight-laced Brad and Janet from buttoned up virgins to …well that might be spoiling things a bit.

Lohrberg and Shaw perfectly handle the two poles of their character arcs. No one would claim that there are any deep roles in Rocky Horror and Brad and Janet are probably the least showiest of roles, but they are the two characters that undergo the most change throughout. Not getting lost in the background to characters like Frank-N-Futer, Riff Raff and Rocky Horror takes skill and they find all the right notes to keep their characters in balance. The entire cast performs well, Standouts to me vocaly were Hope Nordquist and Cameron Reeves as Magenta and Eddie, but it is a uniformly strong cast. The star of the show is Gracie Anderson, she has the most over the top role of Dr. Frank-N-Futer, There is a lot to play with, and a lot of people to play with, in this role. She seems to be relishing the outrageousness of the character that dominates everyone else on stage. There’s a nice little bit where she illustrates her dominance over one of her servants by literally putting her under foot. Anderson has a fantastic voice and a commanding stage presence, and she does a great job with the role.

So I struggle with how I feel about Anderson in the role. The Director/Choreographer Ilana Ransom Toeplitz writes in her program notes “Nobody is going to benefit from watching a man do a Tim Curry impression in a pair of cheap heels and fishnets.” as her justification for casting Anderson in the role. First of all I think this undercuts the role of all actors male and female to suggest that the only way to play a role is in the style of the person who made it famous. This is suggesting that if a man had been cast that’s all they could have done with the role. We live in a time when actors are pressured to relinquish roles as Transgender characters because they are not transgender. One school of thought says Acting is becoming someone other than you are and any actor should be considered for any role, we don’t have to be a Dr. to play a Dr. and we shouldn’t have to be a transgender person in order to play transgender. The other school of thought is that there are Transgender actors out there that are under represented and they should be considered first for those roles. We all know that there are more talented performers out there of all races, sexual orientations, gender identities, and physical abilities then there are roles to go around. If this was a small town in rural MN casting this show it would not be an issue what gender the person you cast in the role was. You would have a limited pool from which to cast and you’d pick the person that was the closest fit talent wise for the role. But this is the twin Cities, there would seem to be a nearly inexhaustible supply of highly talented people who could fill the role. This role is traditionally played by a man and there is a transgressive aspect to some of the sexual situations that come about later in the show that challenge societal taboos. While we could say that those same taboos are still challenged by the gender swap I think the effect is lessened significantly. Rather than presenting something that is still challenging to much of mainstream America, you have transferred the most transgressive element to the configuration that became nearly mainstream about the time Midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show began. It seems to me under the guise of not playing it safe Park Square Theatre’s production actually creates a less challenging show. The Rocky Horror Show probably lost the ability to shock decades ago, but it can still make us confront some of those old hang ups.

This is still a fun show, this is still a great cast making for a fun and engaging night out at the theater. Anderson does an amazing job. She is not responsible for the casting choices and should not be criticized for them, her talents and the role are well met. The production itself has a nice design, several lighting and staging ideas are quite clever and effective. Aside from the casting decision above the production is well directed and choreographed by Ilana Ransom Toeplitz. You are not going to go wrong with this production, it is fun, engaging and has a cast that really delivers. The Rocky Horror Show Plays through Nov. 2nd at The Park Square Theatre in St Paul, Tickets can be purchased online at https://parksquaretheatre.org/

Trademark Theater’s World Premiere Production The Hollow at the Tek Box in Minneapolis, three years in the making and well worth the wait.

Two couples, four creators Jenna Wyse, Joey Ford and Emily and Tyler Michaels King (photo by Dan Norman)

The Hollow which opened last week at the Tek Box in Minneapolis is described as “A concept album performed live with movement and dance”. That sounds kind of out there doesn’t it? The show began life three years ago, with the music created by husband and wife team of Jenna Wyse and Joey Ford, who wrote and perform the music. Original attempts at mounting it were as an adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow but no matter how they tried to make that work in the words of one of it’s creators, Tyler Michaels King, “The Hollow wanted to remain headless”. And so, other than a few lyrics pulled from different portions of the Washington Irving tale, there is nothing left to remind us of the connection except the feeling inherent in autumn that seems to be shared between them. Well, and the word Hollow. Now it rejects any sense of traditional narrative, it is on one hand a concert and on the other hand a series of modern dance movements designed and performed by the other married team of creators Emily Michaels King and Tyler Michaels King. Did I scare you there? Maybe there is a little more left of the Headless Horseman than we thought. But trust me there is no need to be frightened. I understand your apprehension, I had some too.

The Extent of my exposure to modern dance is that I’ve seen Wim Wender’s Documentary film Pina, which was really interesting. But that’s it, that’s what I know, so next to nothing. In fact until I saw this show I’d completely forgotten I’d seen that film. Now, I knew going into tonight that I was going to enjoy the music. I’d been able to attend a sneak preview of some of the music in a paired down version a couple of weeks ago. I knew I loved the music and vocals of Wyse and Ford, but I wasn’t sure how I would react to the dancing. Let’s get the scary part out of the way first so we can relax. The dancing isn’t boring, the dancing isn’t silly, the dancing isn’t pretentious. The dancing is astonishing in it’s precision, breathtaking in it’s athleticism, and alluring in it’s seductiveness. There is a moment towards the end of the show where the movements of the Dancers is so perfectly timed with a lighting effect that they actually appear to be levitating, it is one of several moments of actual awe that the evening afforded.

The music was created and performed by Wyse and Ford, who are accompanied onstage by three vocalists Annie Schiferl, Antonia Perez and Jennifer LeDoux, drummer Marcus Bohn, and on Marimba Matt Silverberg. The Musicians are tight and the Vocals sounded amazing if not always clearing understandable, one of the dangers of performing unknown songs live. That didn’t affect my enjoyment of the music, I caught most of the lyrics and as I stated before there is really no traditional narrative. I found that I understood what I needed of the words and found the music more about the mood, tone and themes rather than the explicit details. I love the sound of Wyse and Ford’s voices together and that is quite enough to carry you through the piece. As focus drawing as the Dancing is, at times I struggled where to look as the singers are also very engaging. Jenna Wyse particularly cannot help but express her joy at performing this music, and joy can be a very captivating quality.

The Hollow is anything but hollow, and yet, it is also hollow. Full of beautiful music and movement that is filled with emotions. But what those emotions represent is left to each individual member of the audience. It gives you so much yet leaves itself open to be filled and interpreted by our own experiences. My mind initially approached the program as it would any other show, trying to discern the narrative even though I was aware there wasn’t an concrete story being told. Our minds are conditioned to approach things in a certain fixed way and gravitates towards that automatically. So engrossing is the program the elaborate and precise nature of the movement that I quickly lost myself in what I was seeing. When I did that and stopped trying to actively project a narrative, however simple onto what I was seeing, that is when I started find myself and my experiences onstage. Included along with the program is a booklet of the songs lyrics. I’ve glanced it, but want to peruse it later after the evening has settled a little. I don’t want any detail within to contradict my interpretation just yet. I will enjoy it in a little while as the poetry it is.

AS for what I brought to the show, that is for me, as it should be for everyone. My sharing with you my thoughts on what the show meant or was about might hinder your minds creativity as you experience it for yourself. I know from speaking with the Michaels Kings after the show that they have, as you would expect their own motivations for the movements. But, it is very much intended for the audience to bring what they carry with them. What was unique about tonight in my experience was being allowed to tell myself my own story through their work, rather than simply being told one. A stronger degree of connection was formed with the performers as you feel you have a role to play besides that of appreciation. This may sound challenging, but it isn’t. It is a uniquely freeing experience. We all interpret it for ourselves and we can chose to share that or keep it to ourselves. There are no right or wrong interpretations. “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

This was my first experience at the Tek Box. It seemed to be what I would classify as a performance space. The staff sold concessions and Izzy’s before the show and chatted with patrons until the house opened. There was not much in terms of set but impressive effects and transitions were created simply through the lighting designed by Karin Olson. the clean Intimate space helped create that essential link between the artists and the audience, which is exactly the right environment for this show.

The Hollow plays through Oct. 20th at the Tek Box in Minneapolis tickets and more information about the show are available at http://www.trademarktheater.org/

Plan ahead for Halloween Fun at the 8th season of the Twin Cities Horror Festival

In my household everyone knows there is no such thing as the month of October. When listing months it goes August, September, Monster Month November, December. So being the theater fan I am and having an affection for celebrating bumpities and spookables during the month which must not be named, I was intrigued to discover the Twin Cities Horror Festival (TCHF). The TCHF is Eleven days of onstage horror and more. It’s eighth season runs from October 24th thru November 3rd at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis. The festival consists of 12 stage shows, The Horror Show Hot Dog Short Film Festival, and a Lobby sensory experience called Living Embalming Sessions that will send you home with a death certificate.

With basically 14 different shows to experience how can you possibly see everything? Well it’s even trickier than that because The Horror Show Hot Dog Short Film Festival shows a different selection of short films at each screening, of which there are 5. The good news is each of the shows runs just under an hour, so there are multiple shows on any given day, and you can easily catch 4 to 5 on a weeknight, don’t worry about getting too sleepy, remember these are horror shows. Up to 8 shows can be taken in on a weekend. Appointment’s to be embalmed can be made in the lobby, in case that is a service you need. With all but one show having 5 performances throughout the 11 days of the festival, there are many opportunities to see as many as you’d like. Be Warned as you make your schedule there is one show, Sara’s FUNeral: An Open Casket Cabaret that has a single performance on Saturday Nov.2nd at 11:30 AM, so if you are a completest plan accordingly.

The complete schedule and descriptions of each show can be found at www.tchorrorfestival.com. For families looking for some good clean scares read the full descriptions on the website Click on SHOWS –> LINEUP AND TICKETS scroll down to the individual show descriptions, when you click on More you will get a fuller description, scroll to the bottom of the page and each show has a rating, here is an example from Frankenstein

Ratings (1-5)
Language – 4
Violence – 5
Blood – 5

Suggested Age 16+

Tickets can be purchased for individual shows or you can buy multi-show passes. There is the Four Horsemen Pass which gets you 4 tickets at a discount which you can use to see 4 different shows or to take a group of 4 to 1 show, you can purchase as many of those as you want. They also the Skeleton Key, which is basically unlimited access to all the shows. This is the route to go if you intend to see everything at least once and multiple sessions of The Horror Show Hot Dog Short Film Festival. I plan to take in as many as my schedule allows for. I would like to point out that the TCHF officially became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit this year. This ensures that they are able to pass on all money raised from individual tickets sales to the artists behind the shows.

I promise to post reviews of the shows I get to, the day of whenever possible. So if you are on the fence on which shows to check out, check back throughout the Festival I’ll post them as I see them. I’ll end with a selection of Photos from previous shows

World Premiere of Cole Porter’s 1928 Ambassador Revue is joyous blend of high and low brow entertainment at the Minnsky Theatre in NE Minneapolis

The story goes that Cole Porter’s 1928 Ambassador Revue played for a year in Paris and then the score was lost. Almost 90 years later it was found and after 2 years or archival work the show was reconstructed in it’s entirety. That show opened last night at the Minnsky Theatre in NE Minneapolis in what is proclaimed a world premiere. This was my first visit to the Minnsky Theater. It is not a theatre that one goes to gain a better understanding of the human condition or to wrestle with a woman’s place in the universe. This is a place you go to with friends to have a good time. If that is your goal, and I can’t think of a better one on a Friday or Saturday night, you will not leave disappointed. I hear that some of their shows are a bit risque, this was as well, but in a PG-13 way. This is a show you can take Grandma to, assuming she’s been around the block a few times. The theatre is small and as such there is not really a bad seat in the house.

The show itself has no story or plot other than frequent banter by the Emcees played by Tiffany Parks Roberts and Brandon Rumfelt with the perfect amount of big vaudevillian hamminess. They essentially tell us a little bit of the history of the play (see opening paragraph) and then make silly and sometimes naughty comments about what just happened or what is happening next. It’s safe to say these bits were not part of Porter’s original revue. The rest of the show is all singing and dancing. You will recognize some of the songs “Let’s Misbehave” and a personal favorite of mine “Looking at You” but many were I suspect lost to time. Most are enjoyable if not instantly recognizable. The music was beautifully performed, and the Musicians were spot on .

For the most part the singing was good, there were a few vocalists that were not quite up to the task of projecting to the back rows. There were a couple of standouts Tom Berg for one, reminded me of the performer in a music hall from an old movie. He handled the sillier songs and the more serious with equal aplomb. The Standout vocalist though was Adam Lowe, easily the best voice on stage, though oddly, for a couple of songs not off book during the performance. Those songs were not ones that required dancing so he got away with it, and actually did a nice job of acting like he was meant to have a folder of music with him on stage. Other standouts vocally were Hannah Bakke and Ruby Carlson who had a particularly fun number as the Madame in a Bordello.

The biggest surprise of the evening was the dancing. There were some numbers that felt like Busby Berkeley stagings on a scaled down budget. That isn’t a slight, as those numbers were quite effective. I may have misspoken earlier when I said there wasn’t a bad seat in the house, I take that back for this show. I was centered but in the back row and I’d take that seat over the VIP seats at the front. I have a feeling they missed some of the effect of the choreography not having the distance to see the bigger picture. Each song had it’s own style and mood like watching Gold Diggers of 1935 on TCM. There were dances of amazing athletic ability, I’m guessing those were the performers listed under The ExperTeasers in the program. One complaint would be the program, which lists everyone under headings, but has no indication of who sang which songs or danced which dances and no actor bios. It’s hard to know whom to credit with what. One dancer who must be singled out is Miranda Shaughnessy (I had to track someone down after the show to get her name). Shaughnessy caught my attention from the first song, she was clearly the best dancer in the cast and as such was featured in many songs. She had the smile and ability to project in every moment the joy she was feeling. No one’s face shone as a performer the way hers did during every second on stage, this is a great gift for a dancer and an actress. Ms. Shaughnessy at times impressively tapping at others performing exquisite ballet, all of it beautifully executed. I’m going to do a long boring list of the Choreographers listed in the program now because they deserve to be recognized for their contributions; Jac Fatale (also the shows director and Founder of the Minnsky Theatre) Alison Pink Maanum, Stephanie Myers, Thomas Noman, Miranda Shaughnessy, Libby Ulm, Bette Darryl.

The show runs Oct 3-5 with performances at 7:30 PM and a matinee on Oct 5th @ 1:30 PM. Tickets prices range from $30 -$50 and can be purchased at https://www.minnsky.com/cole-porter-s-the-ambassador-revue.html