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NEWS: Jungle Theater Announces 2019-2020 Season

by Twin Cities Arts Reader -

The Jungle Theater in Minneapolis announced its 2019-2020 season last night. The coming season will bring cyclones, doll houses, redwoods, Mary Janes, and Cambodian rock bands, plus a reprise of Jane Austen double features. It includes five local premieres, two revivals running in repertory, and a musical collaboration with Theater Mu.

Season at Glance

  • Ride the Cyclone (local premiere)
    • September 11-October 20, 2019
  • The Wickhams and Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley
    • In repertory, November 18-December 29, 2019
  • A Doll’s House, Part 2 (local premiere)
    • January 15-February 23, 2020
  • Redwood (local premiere)
    • March 11-April 12, 2020
  • Mary Jane (local premiere)
    • May 2-May 31, 2020
  • Cambodian Rock Band (local premiere)
    • June 24-August 2, 2020

Show by Show

First up in the season is Ride the Cyclone, a musical by Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell about teenage choir members who experience a tragic, freak accident on a rollercoaster – and get the opportunity to reflect though song. Sarah Rasmussen directs.

Second in the season is an unusual injection of Jane Austen: the Lauren Gunderson/Margot Melcon plays Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley and its sequel The Wickhams running in repertory November and December. Christina Baldwin directs.

The new year brings A Doll’s House, Part 2, the sort-of sequel to Ibsen’s 1879 play A Doll’s House. Of a very different tone than the original, this 2017 play finds Nora returning 15 years later, to the dismay of the family she walked out on. A New York City run in 2017 garnered eight Tony Award nominations.

March might not bring a melt, but it’s going to bring controversy and uncomfortable situations in Redwood by Brittany K. Allen. What happens when romance runs smack into awkward family history…like slave-owning across the color line? In this Kilroy List play, Meg discovers that her partner’s family used to own hers. Naturally, drama commences, complete with ancestor invocation and a hip-hop dance class chorus. H. Adam Harris directs.

Amy Herzog’s drama Mary Jane runs at the Jungle during the month of May. Praised by The New Yorker as “theatre that shines from her characters’ inner life first”, the play explores the demands of single motherhood and the experience of raising a child with cerebral palsy. Sarah Rasmussen directs.

Bringing the season to a close is a collaboration with Theater Mu to stage Cambodian Rock Band by Lauren Yee. This play with music follows a refugee father’s return to Cambodia 30 years later to search for his daughter. It garnered Yee the 2019 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, the 2019 Whiting Award for emerging writers, and the 2018 Horton Foote Prize for Outstanding New American Play. Joshua Kahan Brody directs.

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