What if I told you the best play I’ve seen in recent memory was performed by actors reading from scripts in a whitewashed warehouse space with a loading dock? Unless you were one of the few dozen other audience members sitting on folding chairs that night, you’ll never be able to corroborate my claim yourself. The play in question was only performed on March 30th, and will never be done by the same company again.
You could, however, go to the next iteration of this pop-up play series called TABLE/READ.
The brainchild of local theatermaker Grant Sorenson, Table/Read is a monthly event where he organizes one-night-only performances in nontraditional spaces. “Performances” is the key word here, as it’s not all plays in the standard sense.
I attended the seventh iteration of this series, in which a cast of seven performed the play You Got Older by Clare Barron, directed by Sorenson. The fifth show was a reading of the film All About Eve and the third was titled “October Solos,” which featured four pieces including a song cycle by composer David Lang called Death Speaks. Maybe Sorenson will be bold enough to do a full musical soon. Considering his moonshot ambition so far, I’d bet on it.
I’m getting ahead of myself, though. The thing that makes Table/Read the most enticing is that the performance you’re buying a ticket to isn’t announced until you show up that night. You’ll know the actors, which are listed online and on Instagram, but that’s it. Sure, you might be hesitant to buy a $35.88 mystery ticket (the price per folding chair the night I attended), but to put that in perspective: that’s the price of two North Loop cocktails these days, and every ticket at Table/Read comes with a drink.
On March 30th, my glass of sparkling wine (good stuff, too!) was poured by Sorenson himself in the new home of Table/Read: 901 N. Third Street, Suite 156, which is in the same building as the Butcher & The Boar in the North Loop. While the series has hopped around to various spaces, this appears to be the permanent home, and Sorenson has given it a name, too: The Modern Rep.
My surprise play, You Got Older, is about a thirty-something woman (played here by Miriam Schwartz) who moves back into her childhood home with her father (Stephen Yoakam) as he undergoes cancer treatment. There are the expected run-ins, like with a childhood acquaintance who still lives in town (Eric Sharp), and with her siblings who visit their dad at the hospital together (Maureen Sherman-Mendez, Katrina Stelk, and Ben Tracy) — and unexpected ones, like when we see inside her head to the cowboy she fantasizes about (Logan Lang, who came prepared with the appropriate headgear).
I had never seen this play before, but as Sorenson noted, it’s currently playing off-Broadway. Curiously, I didn’t leave with any FOMO. No sense of, I wish I were in New York right now so I could see a full production! Instead, the alchemy between the actors in the room that night, especially the one-step-ahead-of-you rapport between Schwartz and Yoakam, and the tightrope between squirmy hilarity and cutting honesty that Schwartz walked with Sharp, made me feel that sets and lighting and costumes and props are unnecessary barriers to erect between this audience and this play. The actors holding scripts didn’t stop me from feeling this story of a woman’s attempt to stop time deep in my bones.
Every once in a while I hear people involved in theater in one way or another make the pronouncement that they, or we, as a collective, need to read more plays. I don’t dispute that. I think society can only benefit from wrestling with theater more, and from using our library cards more. But for people outside the theatermaking realm, I think a more reasonable goal is for us to all see plays more, talk about plays more, recommend plays more.
To do that, we need events like Table/Read that take plays outside the cobwebbed box society has placed them in and remind us why live theater is indeed the most essential art form.
We also need events like Table/Read because it’s exhilarating to get out on a Monday night and sit elbow to elbow with a room full of strangers while one actor pretends to put ointment on another’s imaginary rash. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I guess you’ll have to buy tickets to the next one so you can be in on the fun. It’s already set: Monday, April 27th, with four new actors, an as-yet-unnamed play, and even a specialty cocktail this time.
Remember, first drink’s on Sorenson.
Table/Read
https://www.tablereadmpls.com/
The Modern Rep
901 N. Third Street, Suite 156
Minneapolis, MN 55401
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