Minnesota Fringe Day 8: Grief, It’s what’s For Dinner (The Stages of MN Fringe of the Day Award Winner), Big Honor Student Energy, The Writers Room: A Failed Documentary, The Year of Sluttery.

So after a day off at a very frustrating Minnesota United game it was great to be back in the theater for Shows 31 to 34. But my Theater day actually began with a matinee performance of The fantastic Singing in the Rain at Artistry in Bloomington. If I can I’ll have a review of that up this weekend but it may have to wait until Monday. Here are my Reviews for day Eight of the Fringe Festival!

Grief, It’s What’s For Dinner is The Stages of MN Fringe of the Day Award winner. It’s a play that turns out to be a powerfully affecting way to talk about a difficult subject matter, early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Creator and star, Kayla Hambek is telling the story of her experience as a caregiver for her Mother, who passed away in April of this year, after living nearly 12 years with the disease. Sounds like a rough show right? Well it is told with a ton of humor and puppets. Why? Well two reasons, for one when we talk about difficult things sometimes it helps to remove ourselves a little and puppets have always been a surrogate conduit for our difficult emotions. Also it’s Fringe, of course there are puppets. In true Fringe fashion, at their opening performance the dog in the photo above, who is not known to anyone in the show, wandered on stage. Gotta love Fringe. The entire cast for this show is just great, but extra shout out to The Stages of MN Superfan, and the first audience member I ever had come up to me and ask for a picture (making her in a way the spark for the at a show with… montages on the YouTube Show), Sher U-F, who plays multiple roles, but really transforms when playing Kayla’s mother. To purchase tickets go to the shows page at The Minnesota Fringe Site here https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2025/grief-it-s-what-s-for-dinner

Big Honor Student Energy is Chicago traveling artist Alisa Rosenthal’s solo show about being an over achiever. By this she means going all in on anything she attempts. Probably her biggest hurdle is that what she attempts doesn’t meet most people’s criteria of a worthy goal. Like being a musical children’s party performer or going to clown school. But what she has learned and what she teaches us by the end of her show is that everyone’s path is different and what matters is what fulfills you. Most people measure success by how much money they have or where they are with their careers, the cars they drive and the size of their house. But what Rosenthal has learned and I concur is that these things are not always a measure of success, unless those are the things you value. I just accepted a new job after being unemployed for over a year. I’ll be making a little less than 45% of what I made before. But you know what? I’m excited about it. Because instead of working for corporate America in a job I wasn’t passionate about, I’ll be supporting special education students in a local high school. I’m also working nonstop taking The Stages of MN to the next level. I feel very successful right now, not because I have a lot of money, I don’t, but because maybe for the first time in my life I feel like I’m doing something that matters with my life. All of it geared towards doing what I can to make the future brighter for theater and hopefully for high schoolers who need a little extra support and their teachers. Thats how I’m measuring success, not by how much I added to some corporations bottom line. To purchase tickets go to the shows page at The Minnesota Fringe Site here https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2025/big-honor-student-energy

The Writer’s Room: A Failed Documentary is a sketch comedy show and like all sketch comedy some of it works and some of it doesn’t. The measure of success lies in what the ratio of success to falls flat is. This show falls very far in the success column. Even the bits that don’t entirely work still have laughs and a clever idea behind them. My favorite bits include the bridging sequences of the performers discussing ideas for their Fringe show, parts of which felt very ad libbed, in the best possible way. I also really liked “Hot Sauce Therapy” and “A Wes Anderson Sex Scene“. When you feel like you’ve seen one Improv show too many, switch gears to this highly entertaining Sketch show it’s full of laughs and the appealing cast make it a very enjoyable show. To purchase tickets go to the shows page at The Minnesota Fringe Site here https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2025/the-writers-room-a-failed-documentary

The Year of Sluttery is a solo show performed by a writer under the pseudonym Scarlet. A former High School teacher and Sunday School teacher she performs excerpts from her book. It’s primarily about the year in which after getting out of the second long term relationship of her life, and in her 50’s, she went looking for some sexual fulfillment. It’s about the losers she hooked up with and the lessons she learned from each. For the most part the stories are fun and as Scarlet points out in the beginning she is not an actor she’s a writer. The strengths of the show are the stories, the weakness is her delivery, it’s not bad, it’s just as she promised, she isn’t a performer. There is an over reliance on repetition at times that might work better were it presented by someone with more performance experiences and she relies on the phrase bitches a bit too much. All in all it’s a fun time and there is a positive message about female sexual empowerment. Scarlet also has really cool swag on sale at her shows including her book, t-shirts, and cum rags. To purchase tickets go to the shows page at The Minnesota Fringe Site here https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2025/the-year-of-sluttery

That’s it for day eight of the Minnesota Fringe Festival you can click on the Fringe website here to get details on all of the shows https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2025. Don’t forget to tune into The Stages of MN YouTube channel for mini episodes all week long from The MN Fringe Festival https://www.youtube.com/@TheStagesofMN

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