One Person Shows Added to Commonweal Season

Last night marked the first of four, one-person shows that make up a summer/fall series the theater is calling “Commonweal Presents.” The plays come from regional, national, and international theatres.

Last night’s opening performance of Michelle Myers Berg’s Blue Collar Diaries proved to be an intimate and powerful theatre experience. Myers Berg portrayed characters made up from the working-class St. Paul, Minnesota neighborhood where she grew up. The main thread of the narrative revolves around her relationship with her distant and all-too-often angry father. Myers Berg discovers that her father, and her entire family, lived within the shadow of the Korean War, a war that neither she, nor the country seemed to know much about.

While the road to understanding this shadow holds the play together, Myers Berg’s portrayal of the characters on the periphery of her childhood steal the show—characters many of us know and attitudes about raising children that will feel all-to-familiar to those of us raised towards the end of the baby boom.

This first “Commonweal Presents” offering certainly indicates that these four productions will all be richly rewarding experiences.

Here are the Commonweal’s descriptions of the 4 plays:

Blue Collar Diaries

Written and performed by Michelle Myers Berg
August 10 & 11

Michelle Myers Berg in Blue Collar Diaries.

Michelle Myers offers a glimpse of some of the memorable characters that drifted through her St. Paul blue collar neighborhood in the 60's and 70's. Their personal stories go far beyond the names stitched above their left breast pockets. Exploring both the larger world of the neighborhood around her and the epic silence of her Korean War vet father with humor and poignancy, Myers celebrates the individual inside the uniform in this original one-woman show. Named one of the top ten performances of 2009 by the St. Paul Pioneer Press’ Dominic P. Papatola.

Min Mor (“Mother”)

Dramatised and directed by Anne-Karen Hytten
Performed by Bente Børsum
September 15 - one night only!

Bente Børsum in Min Mor.

Bente Børsum, actress with the National Theatre in Oslo, Norway, presents Min Mor (translated “Mother”), a collection of monologues based on the books, articles, and letters of Lise Børsum, the upper-class-wife, war-prisoner and fighter for human rights, who, in 1943, was arrested and sent to Ravensbrück, a concentration-camp in Germany. The Commonweal is proud to welcome one of Norway’s most prolific actresses in a piece that has received international recognition. “An incredibly forceful show about a past that repeats itself every single day in every scene of war in our own time.” Arendals Tidende

www.minmor.no/omabout/about-the-show/

Passion of the Hausfrau

Adapted from the novel by Bess Welden, Annette Jolles & Nicole Chaison
Performed by Bess Welden
October 5 & 6

A one-women show about the hilarious misadventures of a mom who discovers that the roller coaster ride of raising young kids is actually the path to creating her own masterpiece. “Bess Welden made it impossible not to laugh, as she dramatized the trials and hysterical tribulations of motherhood . . . Kids or no kids, this energetic woman’s portrayal of the crazy life and conflicting demands of a young mother . . . is comic genius.” The Portland Phoenix

www.thehausfrauplay.com

Lessons from Cancer College

Written by Nancy K. Barry; Directed by Eva Barr
performed by Kristin Underwood
October 19 & 20

Kristin Underwood in Lessons from Cancer College

What happens when a middle-aged college professor finds herself enrolled in a nine-month course of treatment for breast cancer? This one-woman show explores the anxiety and questions that emerge when the teacher becomes the student—of a disease, of a battery of treatments, and of her own changing body. Assuming it will be a manageable task to continue teaching through cancer, she’s is surprised—and ultimately healed—by the revelation that somehow cancer is teaching through her. Kristen Underwood performs this original adaptation that resonates with power and humor.

Visit the Commonweal for more information on Commonweal Presents