Welcome to One Show to See This Week, a weekly newsletter where I recommend the one play or musical you should see in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in the next seven days, because I believe live theater should be part of your routine. My inbox is always open, as are my DMs. Glad you’re here!
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One Action to Take This Week:
We got word last week that ICE is ending Operation Metro Surge and removing many officers from the state, but we’re still waiting to see the full dispersal, so I’m including at least one more action to take against ICE and in support of our community. Scott Galloway, a professor, author and entrepreneur, started an initiative called “Resist and Unsubscribe” where he’s asking people to cut ties with certain tech companies that are enabling ICE and Trump, like Amazon, Apple, Google, Netflix, Paramount+ and OpenAI. It’s actually much easier than it sounds, so take a look, start unsubscribing, then use the money you saved and the time you have left over from not watching Netflix to see this week’s show…
One Show to See This Week:
In the Green
Theatre Elision, 6105 42nd Ave. N., Crystal, MN 55422
February 19 – March 7
There are some stories that are so inherently theatrical people can’t stop turning them into musicals (I can think of four takes on Cinderella off the top of my head). Then there are stories like that of the 12th-century saint Hildegard von Bingen, where the fact that the subject matter was musicalized feels nothing short of miraculous. But In the Green actually takes a hard task and makes it harder: instead of focusing on her work as a revelatory composer, which would naturally lend itself to this art form, creator Grace McLean tells the story of Hildegard’s seclusion for years in a monastic cell with an abbess named Jutta. (Side Cinderella note: McLean was the Queen in Bad Cinderella on Broadway. See what I mean.)
Theatre Elision describes In the Green as the story of “two exceptional women broken by the world and their journey of healing that changed history,” which is a simple tagline for a radical piece of theater that includes three people playing Hildegard, trippy vocal looping, and some heavy content (the content advisory here is worth a careful read). If you’re ready to expand your theatrical horizons, take my seemingly counterintuitive advice and go lock yourself away with Theatre Elision and Hildegard von Bingen.
Also, try to see the show on opening night on Thursday! All ticket revenue from that performance will be donated to the Pillsbury United Communities Rapid Response Fund, which has been set up to help “250 families with housing support, utilities, medicine, health care needs” and other emergency needs during ICE’s reign of terror. (You can read more about the initiative here and here.) Theatre Elision will also be accepting donations at performances throughout the run.
Stay safe, stay strong, and I’ll see you here next week.
Alex
Main image: Jolie Morehouse Olson
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