• + Send a Postcard
• + Share this work

On Friday, February 11, CalibanCo Theatre will open its third season with Neil LaBute’s BASH, directed by Jeremy Cottrell featuring Heidi Berg, Christi Cottrell, Jared Reise and Jeremiah Stich. The event will begin at 7:00 PM, and all participants will be served hors d’oeuvres and beverages prior to the show. All attendees are also encouraged to participate in a silent auction to help CalibanCo continue its tradition of high-quality, intriguing productions of the world’s greatest tales.

BASH is a dark trilogy exploring the monster lurking in each of us. When asked why he would put such characters on stage, LaBute answered, “Great good can come from showing great evil.” The first selection, “Iphigenia in Orem,” has its basis in Greek mythology. A traveling salesman gives away a dark secret to a complete stranger in a hotel room in Vegas. In “A Gaggle of Saints,” the second piece of the evening, the audience is introduced to a young socialite couple regaling about a reunion with friends in New York City. A magical evening for them both reveals a haunting reality. LaBute ends the trio with “Medea Redux.” Inspired by the infamous Greek legend, the audience watches in horror as a mother confesses to an unimaginable crime. The subject matter of the play is extremely mature and not suitable for all audiences.

After the performance, silent auction winners will be announced, and everyone will launch the theatre into its third season with a champagne toast and birthday cake. You will also have the opportunity to meet the director and actors of BASH and discuss the play. Tickets for this event are $25.

If you are unable to attend this performance, the show will run Friday and Saturday evenings at 7:30 PM through March 5. Tickets are $10 for students and seniors, $12 with a reservation or $15 at the door. We accept cash and check only.

There will also be two "Industry/Pay What You Will" performances on Mondays, February 21 and 28 at 7:30 PM.

Please call 952/210-8295 to reserve your seat or email Reservations.

All performances will be held at CalibanCo Theatre located at 610 W. 28th Street at the corner of Lyndale and 28th in Uptown on the Garfiled side (east side) of Salem English Lutheran Church. Parking is free in the church's lot.

Nasty people take over at Mixed Blood and CalibanCo
Hello, Cruel World
by Quinton Skinner
February 16, 2005

"...Many take issue with Neil LaBute's brand of artistic sadism and his preoccupation with human nastiness, but his status as kingpin of cruel sometimes obscures the fact that he often writes very good dialogue. Fine examples of this are to be found in Bash, his 1999 collection of three one-act plays, staged with a good deal of intelligence and precision by CalibanCo Theatre.

It's an ideal work for a small company, performed in this case on a nearly empty stage with the actors addressing invisible interlocutors. The first entry is set in a bar and features an earnest businessman (Jeremiah Stich) recounting how he passively committed an unspeakable crime. Seated on a bare black floor, lit by a single spot, Stich attains a squirm-inducing matter-of-fact embrace of the sort of terrible events that dominate the evening.

The middle segment features Jared Reise and Heidi Berg as vacuous students with wildly divergent memories of a night spent in New York. They're entirely fascinating. Berg layers sorority-girl charm onto her character, while the disarmingly aw-shucks Reise makes the transition from lunkhead boyfriend to raging sociopath without a trace of hesitation or conscience.

The first monologue of the evening was inspired by Euripides' Iphigenia. The third, featuring Christi Cottrell, is based on Medea. In this telling, Cottrell is a young girl who has had an affair with her teacher, gotten pregnant, and subsequently been abandoned by her older lover. Cottrell has the bleakest line of the evening, the last, and she tells her story with a beaten-down, hollowed-out authenticity that pulls the show to an appropriate close.

LaBute's plays, in lesser hands, have as many frayed threads and half-finished stitches as a cheap pair of blue jeans. Director Jeremy Cottrell's cast, however, has put together a harrowing and fascinating production that casts evil as suffused with banality, or perhaps even with banality as its source."

Producer

http://www.calibanco.org 

The Merchant of Venice - 2006
BEST INDEPENDENT THEATRE - 2005 CITY PAGES
The Tempest - 2005
BASH: The Latter Day Plays - 2005
Feeling Faust (MN Fringe Festival) -2004
The House of Bernarda Alba - 2004
Cymbeline -2004
Suddenly Last Summer- 2003
No Exit- 2003
Aristophanes' The Frogs - 2003
2 Noble Kinsmyn (MN Fringe Festival) - 2002