A world premiere by Native Voices

After returning to her Minneapolis roots, April Dakota is excited to open a wellness center on Franklin Avenue to serve the Indigenous community in the heart of her hometown. She’s counting on a grant from the Franklin Avenue Task Force, but the competition is fierce and her proposal is rejected. Desperate to keep her dream alive, she partners with Esme, a non-Indigenous woman who uses April’s revolutionary ideas for her own gain. But the Task Force pulls together to defend their treasured Franklin Avenue and fight for the future of their community. Drawing on Minneapolis’ rich Dakota and Ojibwe heritage, this Guthrie-commissioned comedy examines the myriad facets of contemporary Native life.

A satire on art and friendship

Serge begins his foray into contemporary art collecting with a big purchase: an unframed white canvas with barely-there white diagonal lines. When his close friend Marc regards the painting with ridicule, Serge is deeply insulted. The two men separately vent to their mutual confidant Yvan, who sees both sides of their seemingly trivial disagreement but wants to keep the peace. When the three friends meet for a night out, the dispute escalates into an all-out interrogation of why they’re even friends in the first place. Brimming with intense and funny dialogue, this Tony Award-winning satire circles existential questions and regularly breaks the fourth wall to include the audience in the onstage musings.

A one-man tribute to a literary legend

Tony Award-winning actor and master clown Bill Irwin has spent a lifetime captivated by Samuel Beckett. The depth of his devotion for the famed Irish writer plays out onstage in a nonstop display of jovial verbal and physical comedy that has become Irwin’s signature. With little more than a microphone and a podium, Irwin lets the audience in on the creative process of engaging with Beckett’s sometimes opaque but undeniably rich language, providing a primer in clowning along the way. In addition to exploring texts by one of the most influential theater voices of the past century, audiences will fall in love with Irwin’s unique and endearing approach to Beckett’s work.

An acclaimed American drama

As the Great Recession of 2008 begins to decimate industries across America, the once-gleaming “Motor City” has lost its luster. At one of its still-standing auto factories, four colleagues-turned-friends hear rumors that their plant is facing foreclosure. Faye, Dez, Shanita and Reggie all have different stakes in the company should it go under, which they grapple with in the break room as the fear of losing their jobs looms. In the final chapter of her acclaimed Detroit trilogy, Dominique Morisseau wrestles with questions of grief, loyalty and self-preservation while exploring the monumental impact of the Recession-era economy on middle-class life.

A new play with humor and heart

In Karaj, Iran, educator Marjan, who perfected her English during a nine-year stint in Britain, strictly maintains an English-only method to ensure her four students pass the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) with flying colors. Everyone has varying motivations, accents and enthusiasm as they pursue fluency together — Marjan included, who feels her own proficiency slipping. After six weeks of trial, error and effort, what they discover about themselves may be the greatest learning curve of all. Iranian American playwright Sanaz Toossi tenderly explores the realities of the language-learning process and the parts of our identities that are lost and found along the way.