BLOG: Season Announcing Season

SEASON ANNOUNCING SEASON! Ah, Spring! That magical time of year when nature awakes from its winter's slumber and is reborn in a glorious display of life's bounty… Or, like what we have this year, when nature falls out of bed with a massive hangover and desperately searches for coffee. Spring is also Season Announcing Season for the theater world. From March through May, the inboxes of every arts reporter in town are flooded with press releases from theater companies promising the sun and the moon and the stars. Each company has meticulously crafted a season with thought and care, one that will send a message to the world, and one which I will most likely forget, because there are a lot of companies in town and a year is an awfully long time to expect anyone to remember the theme under which all of your plays were ostensibly selected. Since just about all of the big boys in town have announced their 2014-2015 seasons (except for Mixed Blood, who are taking their sweet time), I'd like to go through the rundown of what you can expect over the coming theatrical year. We'll look at a bunch of theater companies' seasons and try to divine their themes (unless they've ruined the fun by just telling us what it is). I'd also like to point out the new plays that are being done, because it seems like the big companies in town are investing more heavily in presenting new work, and I want to encourage that kind of behavior. 10,000 Things Theater 10,000 Things' formula is pretty simple: a Shakespeare play, a classic musical and a little something new. This year that formula translates to: Romeo and Juliet, The Unsinkable Molly Brown and The New Don Juan. The company's press release says something vague about doing "big stories that wrestle with big questions" (which is what they normally do), but if you wanted to read too deeply into it, and squint a little you could see the season as an a retrospective on the representation of women on the stage over the years. The new play, after all, The New Don Juan is about a soldier returning home to find that suddenly women hold all the positions of power. And then wacky hijinks ensue. Penumbra Theater If you want a season that's all about women, and you want to be told outright that it's all about women, then look no further than Penumbra, who have dubbed their next season "Womansong" (not to be confused with the premiere female choral ensemble of Asheville, NC). As the company continues its dynastic transition of power from father to daughter, they have selected a a season that is purposely focused on female playwrights. You may have heard that there just aren't enough talented female playwrights "in the pipeline", but Penumbra has a Pulitzer Prize winning writer and a recipient of the Kennedy Prize for drama on its roster for next season. The season will also kick off with two new one-person shows performed by the people who wrote them. Mu Performing Arts Speaking of leadership transitions, Mu Performing Arts will be moving into its first full season under new Artistic Director Randy Reyes.. Some things won't change: traditions like Mu Daiko in Concert and A Very Asian Christmas will be back, as well as the obligatory David Henry Hwang play and what is becoming another tradition for Mu: an Asian-American adaptation of Shakespeare. Most interesting, though, is Mu's investment and belief in its local community of artists. In this coming season, two of the four plays Mu produces will be brand new works written by local performers that have worked with the company for years: Eric ‘Pogi’ Sumangil’s The Debutante’s Ball; and Eric Sharp's Middle Brother (a finalist for the National New Play Network Showcase, directed by Jeune Lune vet Robert Rosen). The Walker The awkwardly-shaped museum of modern art continues its purposeful hipster weirdness with its next performing arts series, featuring a lot of musicians and performing artists from out of town that you've probably never heard of, as well as the inevitable "confrontational naked dance piece". As per usual, the Walker mostly ignores the fact that there are things going on in theater, dance and music right in its own back yard, except for their season-closer, a co-production with the Soap Factory that features a former member of Hüsker Dü and local sculptor Chris Larson. It all sounds very Minnesotan until you find out that the piece is an examination of Flannery O'Connor's southern-gothic novel Wise Blood. Like every season the Walker announces, the theme I get from it is that I am not hip enough to understand what is going on at the Walker. History Theater If you want to find something nice and normal and comforting and, well, just goshdarn Minnesotan, the History Theater has got some Garrison Keillor for you. For a theater company that's supposed to be about the past, almost the entirety of its season will be new plays. Along with Keillor's usual mosey through nostalgia, we get God Girl and Road River Boogie, both world premieres. When you count the fact that Mu's Debutante's Ball will be playing at History as well, you realize that the History Theater has somehow taken control of the leaderboard for producing new work. Children's Theatre The 2014-2015 season is pretty much standard Children's formula: mostly full of adaptations of kids' books. This year's season seems curiously conventional, even for a company whose identity is built on being family friendly and non-provocative. In fact, I couldn't find any actual news coverage of the new season. However, there are two interesting things I want to point out. First of all, they are doing an adaptation of Huckleberry Finn, and even though I know it won't happen, I would like to see them use the n-word as liberally as the book does. Secondly (and more importantly), Children's is producing one of the theater things I'm most excited about for the entire Twin Cities theater scene next season: an immersive production of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, directed by Ryan Underbakke (who, among other things, helped create the fantastic 7 Shot Symphony). From what I hear, the cast is shaping up to be a who's who of the Twin Cities' devised theatre world. Park Square Of course, the big news at Park Square is not just a new play or two, but a whole new theater. The company will be adding a small second stage, which should be under construction by now, and using it to expand and diversify. With 19 productions, it's Park Square's biggest season ever. Of course, you'll find all the old traditional crowd pleasers that the company does well, but with their new stage, Park Square is consciously moving toward new and more unconventional work. Now, if they could just keep other companies in town from stealing their thunder... Guthrie Theater And, so it comes, as it always does, back to the Guthrie. It's Joe Dowling's last season, and there's plenty in there that's just for Joe, including the AD taking three trips through the director's chair before he leaves the flying G forever. I could sit here and pick apart the uninspired cobbling-together of overdone classics and whatever was hot in the east coast regional circuit two years ago that is the Guthrie's normal programming (and there is certainly some of that represented this season), but instead I would like to share with you what I think they're doing right in this next season. No, it's not A Midsummer Night's Dream. If you feel you have to do A Midsummer Night's Dream, this feeling is wrong. Very wrong. First of all, Guthrie, I know everyone's giving you crap about scooping Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play from Park Square, but I won't. It's a good play, one of the weirdest ideas to be taken seriously in a long time, and I'm glad someone is doing it. Now, don't screw it up. Second of all, Guthrie, thank you for putting up a play opposite your regular A Christmas Carol. And thank you for making it about drinking, because that's exactly the antidote we need for another year of A Christmas Carol And, finally Guthrie, and most importantly, I don't think we give you enough credit for putting accomplished local groups on your stages. Sure, I could cynically argue that you're only doing it because you're running low on ideas and cash to pay for them, but buried in your press release I see Jon Ferguson's Theater Forever, Flying Foot Forum, Pillsbury House and Mount Curve Company, and 7th House Theater. And there's a new immersive theater piece being developed by Sarah Agnew, Nick Golfis and Chantal Pavageaux? Why aren't you talking more about these things? But, unfortunately, the theme in the media for the Guthrie will be Joe's Big Goodbye. Still, I hope you take some time to see all the stuff that's sitting in Dowling's shadow, because it might actually be interesting.