About Cheap Theatre

Cheap Theatre was founded in September, 1995. For the last five years, we have provided emerging writers with professional productions in an annual New Play Series. The inaugural Series took place in the fall of 1996 and featured The Shout and Cry Trilogy by Erica Christ, and starke.florida by Ken Varnold. In the 1997 New Play Series, Cheap Theatre presented the World Premieres of Leaves by Randy Sue Latimer and In the Petrified Forest by Luu Pham. The 1998 New Play Series opened with the critically acclaimed Notes on the Uncertainty Principle (time and space being a fiction) by Todd Irvine and continued with Ithaca, by Gwendolyn Schwinke. For the Fourth New Play Series we moved to a fall-spring format. We opened with Stroganoff, by Erica Christ, which became our most successful show to date, with record attendance and critical praise! We followed in the spring with Anne Garcia-Romero’s Santa Concepción. For our fifth anniversary season we presented the World Premiere of The Primitive, by Todd Irvine. We continued with a partnership with the Hidden Theatre to bring audiences a reprise of Erica Christ’s First Lady, starring the Hidden Theatre’s Annelise Christ as Eva Perón. In the fall of 2001 we presented the World Premiere of Allison Moore’s The Sad Misadventures of Patty, Patty’s Dad, Patty’s Friend Jen and a Bunch of Other People. Our seventh season featured award winning playwright Mark Rosenwinkel’s Three Seasons.

Cheap Theatre also produces storytelling shows. These shows give the company an opportunity to work with a wide variety of writers and performers in an informal setting. Audiences enjoy the fun spirited, unpredictable work. Artistic Director Erica Christ chooses a topic for each show and 12 – 20 writers, storytellers, comedians and poets prepare a 10 minute piece. Each show has several performances which each feature a different assortment of performers. Past topics include: “Baseball”, “Lost Virginity”, “Near Death Experiences”, “Work” and “Motorcycles”. Performers have included poetry slam grand champion Thien-Bao Thuc Phi, MPR favorite Beth Gilleland, would-be Minnesota Twins owner Clark Griffith, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 writer and performer Mary Jo Pehl and many other accomplished local artists and personalities.