Medea

The reviews are in.

“Feeling out of sorts? Go float down the Amazon. Things not going well? Go live in a tent, on a beach, in Alaska. Getting tired of the same sort of predictable banalities that pass for serious art these days? Go start a theater. Don’t yak about it; no one wants to hear your moaning. Do something!”

Director Wendy Knox and actress Bernadette Sullivan are doers. In fact, they did all of the above and more. But most to the point here, they got hacked off and started their own theater, and after two years it’s making waves.”

With its new production, Frank Theatre is taking another risky step forward. It’s the largest show the theater has attempted, with 11 actors and musicians and a $30,000 budget, and it will be its first under the Actor’s Equity contract. (Its most expensive previous show cost $3,000, with actors agreeing to perform for a cut of the slim box-office proceeds.)

Knox actually tried to persuade larger, richer theaters to do Smith-Dawson’s MEDEA.”It?s a big play for us,” she said. “Over half the cast is black, and it has music that runs from rap to heavy metal to gospel. It’s about an African American woman who sacrifices her cultural identity to assimilate, a powerful play that is really liked to the real world.

It should be seen, and if not by us, then where? You have to take chances, or what’s the reason for doing theater?”

Mike Steele, Star Tribune