UPCOMING DISCUSSIONS
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"This program is inspiring, both to students and to the rest of us. It's a great way to help them see how important and relevant (and vibrant) arts in their community are to the rest of their lives and to their own experiences."
Irene Faass -
Professor at MCTC
September 19 - 28, 2025
Produced by Exposed Brick Theatre
Exposed Brick Theatre is producing Through Our Eyes 2 - New Play Festival. It is a two-week run of two new short plays by new young playwrights performing back-to-back on the same night @ Open Eye Theatre.
The first play is Burn and Dash by Sunny Thao and Directed by Jame See Yang. The play is about child bride kidnapping in the Hmong culture. Set in the back of a van, two young girls from nearby villages form a friendship and devise a plan to escape the potential life of becoming child brides.
The second play is Quinceañera by Mayra Gurrola Calderon and Directed by Nora Montanez. In preparing for her Quinceañera, a girl faces long buried secrets. The play explores themes of motherhood, grief, queerness and self-discovery. It is also about grief and the roles we play when someone close to us dies suddenly.
Both plays are about young girls growing up in two different cultures and facing the unrealistic expectations and pressures of being a woman in today's world.
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NOTE: Discussions for Burn & Dash / Quinceañera will take place between September 15 - 26, 2025.
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October 9 - November 2, 2025
By Steven Cheslik-deMeyer, Tim Maner, and Alan Stevens Hewitt. Lizzie The Musical is a rock musical opera about the girl who hacked her parents to death (Lizzie Borden) in 1892 in Fall River, Massachusetts. Written in 2016, the play explores themes of queer female desire, feminine rage, repression and the magnetic allure celebrity crime exerts on the American psyche. Developmental Psychology, Life-Span Development and Family Social Science classes would be a great fit for digging into 'where it all went wrong' in this 'perfect' looking American family. The play has a similar style to Hedwig and the Angry Inch and is also awell-timed Halloween scare!
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NOTE: Discussions for Lizzie The Musical will take place between October 13 - 24, 2025.​​​​​​​​
JuCoby Johnson and Stuart Gates at Normandale Community College facilitating an On Stage discussion about Actually
Miriam Schwartz, Lucas Erickson and Michelle O'Neill at Normandale Community College after facilitating an On Stage discussion about Actually
