In a Nutshell: Best in Show at The Sofia/B Street Theatre

This month’s theme is Best in Show: true stories about the animals in our lives. Not just the cuddly-wuddly Instagram versions. The real ones: complicated, convoluted, funny, and sometimes tragic. Often, the relationships we form with animals teach us more about ourselves than the human ones do.

There’s a reason animal stories hit different than most stories. We don’t just love our animals; we build entire emotional worlds around them. We project, we assume, we grieve them before they’re even gone—and sometimes, like storyteller Manuel, we don’t trust them at all. And somehow, that one-sidedness is exactly what makes the bond so specific, so revealing, and so occasionally devastating.

These are stories about what we do with that love (or distrust) that can’t be easily explained. About the unexpected joy that comes from sharing the tedium of daily life with a creature who lives entirely in the moment. About the loss that blindsides you harder than you predicted, because you didn’t know how much of yourself you’d handed to something with fur (or feathers). In these stories, a duck named Luna can carry an entire love story, a stray cat can define a decade, a pet shelter can be a secret, and sometimes, you meet the one dog that makes sure you’ll never tie yourself to an animal again