MACT
Fast*Fest will be held August 17 at the Encore Performing Arts Center in Cloquet. It will feature 15 shows of 20 minutes or less, divided into 3 sessions with 5 performance in each session. Here’s a description of the shows that are scheduled to be presented in the third performance session, Saturday evening at 6:30 pm..
“The Door” was written by Paul Elliott. A grandmother in her late 50s sits in her darkened apartment and refuses to answer the insistent knocking at her front door. In fact, this woman has shut herself off from everything except the one person still capable of reaching her, her teenage grandson, Justin. Now, he sits with her in the darkness, trying every trick he knows to get her to respond, to turn on the lights, to answer the door and reclaim her life. He teases. He torments. He goads. He reminds her that never once would she have let him hide away like this and he’s not about to let her get away with it either. He pushes every annoying button he can push to finally get her to face her worst nightmare and what lies outside that door. She has to do it for herself. She has to do it for him. It’s only at the last moment we discover what she must face when she opens that door …
This thought provoking production from the Seat Of Your Pants Players (Cloquet) will open the third performance session on Saturday evening.
In “Heart Attack”, author John Armstrong tells of his journey to hell and back.
Open Heart Theatre (Bloomington) will be presenting this show as the second performance on Saturday evening.
In Noreen Brandt’s “Wedding Belle Blues”, a dysfunctional family squabbles over the wedding reception for a whining bride-to-be.
Pargeter Players (Eden Prairie) will be presenting this show as the third performance in the Saturday evening session.
“A Woman Over Forty”, by Lindsey Brown. Invisible? I don’t think so. A pair of dark comedic monologues celebrating the trials and tribulations of ‘a woman of a certain age’. No matter what life throws at them, which is a lot, they remain FABULOUS!
This fourth show in the Saturday evening performance session is presented by Applause Community Theatre (St Paul).
In “Death Knocks”, by Woody Allen, Nat Ackermann is on his bed reading when a mysterious figure climbs through his window and claims to be Death. Death is a little nervous; it’s his first day on the job. Nat suggests that they play gin rummy. If Nat wins, he doesn’t have to go to the Happy Hunting Ground for twenty four hours.
This show from the FungusAmongus Players (Dassel-Cokato) wraps up out the festival as the last performance in the Saturday evening performance session.