Peg Kerr's Journal

This past week's Year of Adventure event was to attend two Minnesota Fringe Festival shows as a guest of naomikritzer and her husband Ed. If you're not familiar with the Fringe Festival, it's a week in which local theater venues and actors (amateur and professional) put on forty or fifty of shows over the course of about a week, some written entirely for the occasion. The festival has been running for years.

We saw "The Book of Mordor," (Lord of the Rings crossed with The Book of Mormon) and a parody of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," entitled "Our Zombie Town." We went out to dinner together between the two shows.

I've attended a couple of Fringe shows previously with Fiona, but it has been years. I enjoyed both performances.

I have never seen The Book of Mormon, but from what I know about the story, the crossover worked surprisingly well. There were funny bits of stage business, and the performance was satisfying.

As for the other show, I've been in Our Town myself, and I enjoyed this parody. Some parts were ragged, but the final image (the people of the town sitting in separate chairs, each glued to their phones, their faces illuminated only by the phone light) has stuck with me since I've seen the show. It's a perfect parody of the last act (in which people in the chairs represented the dead in the graveyard) and a sly response to what has always seemed to me to be the most important line in the last act of the original: "Let's look at one another!"

Good theater makes you think as well as laugh, and that final image will stick with me.

Image description: Top: Promotional picture for Fringe show 'Our Zombie Town,' a parody of Thornton Wilder's Our Town. Four people stare as if hypnotized at their phones, ignoring the viewer, their faces lit by the phone screen. Semi-transparent stage lights are overlaid over this picture, giving the picture a greenish cast. Bottom: Promotional picture for Fringe Show 'The Book of Mordor' (Frodo holds up the ring on a chain). Center: a Fringe 2025 button. Right a Fringe line flag.

Fringe



Click on the links to see the 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

I decided to get a rush ticket to see a play at the Guthrie Theater: "Born With Teeth," a two-man production hypothesizing about the relationship between William Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe.

It was an impulsive decision, and I was almost startled by how much I enjoyed it.

I had to show up a couple of hours early to snag a rush ticket, but I managed to do so. The Guthrie is a mere two blocks away from my former law firm employer. I hadn't been back since the day I packed up my stuff and left after they let me go in 2016. I plucked up my courage and took the elevator up to the fourth floor, where I was greeted by a woman who had no idea who I was. "I worked here for twenty-three years," I informed her dryly. "And I just stopped by to see if there were still any familiar faces."

There was one familiar person available who came out to see me, and we chatted for a few minutes. The old place has changed a lot, given the pandemic. Most people now work from home--there were only five people in the office that day--and every attorney I had worked for has since left the firm. Still, I was glad that I stopped by. It gave me the chance to remind myself that I'm really better off having moved on, and I definitely laid some ghosts to rest.

Then I stopped at a Thai restaurant for a bowl of pad thai and then went to see the play. Hugely enjoyable. I stopped in the gift shop and bought a copy, as well as another Jane Austen mug to match the one I already have (I figured that Eric and I can have matching mugs for when he comes over for coffee on Saturday mornings). Finally, I walked three blocks to the Stone Arch Bridge and walked across it, as I did for mid-morning and mid-afternoon breaks for exercise for years when I worked at my former job.

A day well spent. I need to do more things to really get out and enjoy the amenities of the city that the pandemic has made me rather forget.

Alternate collage ideas this week not used:

Dreams
Change

Image description: Background: an image of the Guthrie theater. Against this background, two men in punk/Elizabethan dress (actors in the Guthrie production "Born With Teeth") face each other, one sitting (Will) and one crouching (Kit). Kit has his hand under Will's chin. The logo for the Guthrie is behind Will's head. Lower left: sign for Mill Ruins Park/Stone Arch Bridge. Lower right: a Jane Austen mug. Upper left: logo for Peg's former employer. Upper right: logo for Kin Dee (a Thai restaurant).

Guthrie



Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.

Two items of wunderbar news came down this week: first of all, Delia has landed HER DREAM JOB. Why yes, she is going to be working part time at Michaels, the craft store. She's only wanted to work there since she was eight.

Secondly! A part in a play! And not just any play, but a really major role: she is going to be playing Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream. She received news that she had the part and she wavered a bit, wondering if she could handle it, along with classes and the job. But she's decided to go for it. We're just thrilled for her.

Kudos to Miss Delia from her proud parents.

Fiona saw Next to Normal at the Mixed Blood Theater and called me on her cell phone as soon as she walked out of the theater to demand that YOU MUST GO SEE THIS IMMEDIATELY OMG. I went to see it the next day. I have since bought the soundtrack and am listening to it now. Mixed Blood did a fabulous job with it.

For those of you not familiar with this musical (I wasn't), Next to Normal is an account of a family struggling with mental illness. The mother is bipolar, and the father, who really loves her, is at his wit's end. The play also includes the son, the daughter, and the daughter's boyfriend, and carefully shows how the turmoil caused by mental illness reverberates throughout the entire family system, into the next generation.

The music was also stunning. Here is a performance between the mother (Alice Ripley), the father (J. Robert Spencer), and the son (Aaron Tveit) of the Broadway cast, who also recorded the soundtrack. (The performance begins at the 1:10 minute mark).

( You Don't Know/I Am the One )

Another song performed by Alice Ripley gets at the issue of medication noncompliance, how some people go off their medications because they miss the highs of the manic phase.

( I Miss the Mountains )

Anyway, if you are interested in the topic of severe mental illness and its effect on family dynamics, I really recommend the soundtrack.

Fiona went to see a shortened version on a field trip with her high school and reports that the show is "awesome."

This, as you'll perhaps realize, represents stunning progress in the quality of her critical assessment from the point I previously mentioned, when the only word she could ever articulate to evaluate anything was "good."

Yes, friends list, the Guthrie's Midsummer Night's Dream is not merely good. It's awesome.

Well, there you have it. Go out and buy your tickets today. I'm going to be seeing myself with the family on June 1.