Darius Dotch

The Guthrie Theater has revealed the cast and creative team for the Tony-nominated play Skeleton Crew by Dominique Morisseau. Learn how to purchase tickets.

History Theatre will present the world premiere of Diesel Heart by Brian Grandison. Inspired by Melvin Carter Jr.'s 'graphic, honest, no-holds-barred' autobiography DIESEL HEART, the adaptation to the stage will have you crying and laughing with joy.

The Guthrie Theater today announced the cast and creative team for Sweat, written by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage and directed by Tamilla Woodard. Sweat will play July 16 – August 21, 2022, on the McGuire Proscenium Stage.

The Guthrie Theater today announced casting for Lorraine Hansberry’s theatrical masterpiece A Raisin in the Sun, directed by acclaimed Twin Cities artist Austene Van. A Raisin in the Sun will play January 8 – February 12, 2022, on the McGuire Proscenium Stage.

MN Black Theatre Circle, in partnership with the Guthrie Theater, will present Blackness Is…, a theater-inspired arts festival to be streamed May 21–22 at 7:30 p.m. and May 23 at 7 p.m. CDT. Over the course of three days, the festival will offer a dynamic and diverse showcase of theater, music, dance, poetry and spoken word.

Playwright Dominique Morisseau is a gifted rising voice in the theater, recognized with a 2018 Macarthur 'Genius' Grant. Her straight play PIPELINE centers contemporary lives we see on stage too rarely: an anguished black mother trying to keep her teenage son safe, and her financially successful ex-husband, estranged from both of them. Because Morisseau drops us into both public and private school dilemmas for people of color, we gain insight into the deep inequities in our educational systems in this country, though this never feels like an 'issue play' for two reasons: there is no grasping for simple resolutions and the characters are so thoroughly imagined.

I love a good tragic love story, and it doesn't get much more tragic than an interracial couple in 1918 South Carolina. But Penumbra's gorgeous production of the 1966 play WEDDING BAND by Alice Childress (whose TROUBLE IN MIND was seen at the Guthrie last year) is not just a beautiful, complicated, and ultimately tragic love story. It's also (not unlike TROUBLE IN MIND) a still timely work that speaks to the issues of race, racism, and privilege in ways that feel entirely relevant. With a super talented cast directed by Penumbra's founder Lou Bellamy (who recently passed the Artistic Director baton to his daughter Sarah) and gorgeous design, WEDDING BAND is a show not to be missed, and my favorite of my five-show weekend.

Langston Hughes' poem DREAM DEFFERRED is the source of the title of short-lived but influential playwright Lorraine Hansberry's classic play A RAISIN IN THE SUN. She died at the age of 34 just six years after the play opened on Broadway in 1959, but her work still resonates today. The story of a black family's struggle in 1950s Chicago to accomplish their dreams in a world that didn't want to let them can be palpably felt in the context of today's world. It's a great choice, then, for Park Square Theatre's 2016-2017 season and for their student matinee program, which serves over 30,000 students every year. And it's an incredibly moving production that brings out all the richness of Hansberry's writing. The fantastic local cast and the intimacy of the Andy Boss thrust stage making you feel as if you're in the Younger living room with them, experiencing this devastating, life-changing, and hope-inspiring event.

Park Square continues its 42nd season on the Andy Boss Thrust Stage with Lorraine Hansberry's classic and timely A Raisin in the Sun. This fiercely moving portrait of a family living and dreaming on Chicago's South Side in the 1950s was the first play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway. The Washington Post hails it as "one of a handful of great American plays - it belongs in the inner circle, along with Death of a Salesman, Long Day's Journey Into Night and The Glass Menagerie."

Award-winning director Marion McClinton makes his directorial debut at the Jungle with BARS AND MEASURES, a music-filled new play with an original score by jazz composer Justin Ellington. A National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere, the riveting drama by acclaimed playwright and spoken word artist Idris Goodwin is on stage August 26 through October 9 at the Lyn-Lake neighborhood theater, 2951 Lyndale Ave. S. in Minneapolis.

Award-winning director Marion McClinton makes his directorial debut at the Jungle with BARS AND MEASURES, a music-filled new play with an original score by jazz composer Justin Ellington. A National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere, the riveting drama by acclaimed playwright and spoken word artist Idris Goodwin is on stage August 26 through October 9 at the Lyn-Lake neighborhood theater, 2951 Lyndale Ave. S. in Minneapolis.

Fresh off its world-premiere run in Minneapolis, Children's Theatre Company's new production about an 11-year-old spelling prodigy comes to Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater. The show is adapted for the stage by veteran playwright Cheryl L. West (Arena's Pullman Porter Blues, Jar the Floor), who partners with celebrated director Charles Randolph-Wright (director of Broadway's Motown and an inaugural resident playwright with Arena Stage, where he premiered his play Love in Afghanistan). AKEELAH AND THE BEE runs now through December 27, 2015 in the Kreeger Theater, and BroadwayWorld has photos from the opening night festivites at Arena Stage below!

All in all, this is a thoroughly enjoyable production and one that I would highly recommend.

Fresh off its world-premiere run in Minneapolis, where Star Tribune declared "Akeelah and the Bee triumphs," Children's Theatre Company's new production about an 11-year-old spelling prodigy comes to Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater. The show is adapted for the stage by veteran playwright Cheryl L. West (Arena's Pullman Porter Blues, Jar the Floor), who partners with celebrated director Charles Randolph-Wright (director of Broadway's Motown and an inaugural resident playwright with Arena Stage, where he premiered his play Love in Afghanistan). Akeelah and the Bee runs November 13-December 27, 2015 in the Kreeger Theater.

At first glance, the musicals THE COLOR PURPLE, CALVIN BERGER, and LA CAGE AUX FOLLES may not seem to have much in common. The settings couldn't be more different - the rural South in the early 20th century, a modern day high school, and a drag club in 1970s France. But since I happened to see them all on the same weekend, I couldn't help but draw parallels between them. All three musicals all speak to themes of beauty, identity, self-worth, and having the courage to be who you really are, despite what the world is telling you. In THE COLOR PURPLE, a young, poor, black woman is told that she's ugly and worthless, but after a lifelong journey she arrives at a place of strength and self-love. CALVIN BERGER sets the classic play Cyrano de Bergerac in a modern high school, where a young man feels that his large nose prevents him from getting what he wants in life and chooses to hide behind the handsome popular guy, both of whom eventually learn it's better to be loved for who you are. Finally, in LA CAGE AUX FOLLES, a middle aged man who feels more comfortable dressed as a woman is asked by his own son to hide who he is, but confidently declares 'I am who I am!' Another thing these three musicals have in common is that they can all currently be seen on Twin Cities stages featuring talented local casts. Read on for more details on each, pick one that suits your fancy, and go see a local musical that just may inspire you to love you you really are!

Performed in four 15-minute quarters with a half-time show, featuring a dance company, a drum corps, and a fully-padded cast, COLOSSAL is an epic event that simultaneously celebrates and attacks our nation's most popular form of theater: football.

Performed in four 15-minute quarters with a half-time show, featuring a dance company, a drum corps, and a fully-padded cast, COLOSSAL is an epic event that simultaneously celebrates and attacks our nation's most popular form of theater: football.

Cementing its role as a purveyor of new plays, as a destination for the finest talent in the field, and as an anchor in its Cedar-Riverside Minneapolis neighborhood, Mixed Blood Theatre Company will produce, present, and host 20 theatrical productions in the Alan Page Auditorium of its historic firehouse theatre between August of 2014 and July of 2015.