In a moment of exhaustion and exasperation, Maggie, the main character in Marcie R. Rendon’s “Sweet Revenge,” cries out to her mother: “I’m so tired of your rage controlling me.”
The line is a rebuke to Granny Josephine (played by Oogie Push) and a plea for freedom. Maggie knows firsthand what happens when trauma passes from mother to daughter. She could use a break.
Rendon speaks directly to the history of American Indian boarding schools, designed to strip Native children of their language and culture, in a whip-smart mystery about a tight-knit urban Native community. Her work stands alongside two other performances that confronted deep-seated institutional force last weekend: Moriah Evans’ one-weekend piece at the Walker Art Center, titled “}[…/+*^%<>€£¥$&@!!!!^^^]{,” and Ananya Dance Theatre’s “Prem,” which, like “Sweet Revenge,” continues into this weekend.
The instability of our times calls for performance that confronts both the violence of this moment and the histories that brought us here. On Twin Cities stages, makers are responding with decisive points of view, creating moments of beauty and — yes — entertainment.
Maggie, played with no-nonsense confidence by Fern Renville, has her life figured out pretty well. She’s raising two grandchildren with care and humor while running a successful side business providing spiritual and cultural care. She has an ice cream truck problem, though.
The truck drives by her house every half hour, playing its cheerful tune, and Maggie and Granny Josephine cover their ears in physical pain. The truck is a symbol of the childhood bliss and carefree whimsy that boarding schools stole from Native children. Maggie and Granny’s reactions show how that loss passes from mother to daughter.
Meanwhile, the neighborhood’s ice cream truck drivers keep turning up dead. Detective John Wiisagi-Mitigomizh (Brian B. Joyce) is on the case and finds time to kindle a romance with Maggie.
Presented by Mni Giizhik Theatre Ensemble and Exposed Brick Theatre and directed by Sequoia Hauck, the production paints a nuanced picture of Maggie’s urban Native world, including its squabbles and hypocrisies. Three customers, women with demanding social-services careers, need her spiritual expertise ahead of a community event. Too busy to make prayer ties or prepare communal food, they pay Maggie for ready-made versions and hope to pass them off as their own. Maggie smartly upsells, adding advice and a listening ear.
Saturday’s opening was rough around the edges, with a few line errors and logistically odd staging choices. Instead of preparing food on stage to anchor the domestic realism, Maggie simply brought out plated sandwiches from the refrigerator. The number of ice cream driver fatalities also introduces a math problem — or at the very least, a human resources nightmare for the ice cream company, given the seemingly endless supply of new workers taking on the job despite the murders.
Renville’s charm and strength carry the story’s arc, and Push’s intensity turns up the stakes. The show’s visual team also does a good job balancing the story’s realism with its ghostly particularities, especially the shadow puppetry of Ches Cipriano.
Just as rage powers “Sweet Revenge,” it was the central theme of Moriah Evans’ work last weekend. Her title, “}[…/+*^%<>€£¥$&@!!!!^^^]{,” is the unpronounceable string of symbols cartoonists use to signify an explosive expletive.
Evans’s piece began outdoors across the Walker’s campus. Audiences watched from balconies or from chairs looking out windows as performers clad in fluorescent rain gear danced on the hill outside, on the rooftop and along the sidewalk facing Hennepin Avenue, swinging with the wind as occasional church bells rang.
They carried a sense of freedom that changed dramatically once they moved inside, where their movements became more rigid — almost militaristic at times. At other times, they crawled through the halls as if the institution were siphoning off their power. The text the dancers spoke evoked state-sponsored violence, specifically the deaths of Renee Good and George Floyd.
In the theater, the audience stayed seated as the increasingly frantic piece spilled onto the balconies and across jagged platforms in the front seating area.
In a post-show talkback about the work, Evans described the traditional proscenium stage as an “instrument of patriarchy.” “I often think choreography is a violent project,” she noted.
Using choreographed sequences and structured improvisation, Evans turned the theater into a space of confinement and surveillance. The dancers collapsed on the floor, repeated anxious phrases, screamed, gyrated and explicitly counted bodies, challenging the very structures containing them.
Narrative, too, is a powerful tool for coercion, wielded in police press releases and state propaganda. In the hands of a social justice-focused dance group, it becomes a story of community resistance. Where Evans used choreography to dismantle structural oppression, Ananya Dance Theatre’s “Prem” shows how a community physically survives together, reflecting on Operation Metro Surge, the federal immigration crackdown that sent thousands of agents into Minnesota last winter, as well as the 2020 uprisings.
Ananya Chatterjea’s choreography often follows cycles. Here, she and director Dipankar Mukherjee have organized the story as a progression through catastrophe, grief, resistance, community love and joy. There are solos, but no specific characters; the story unfolds like a Greek chorus. A central moment comes when guest performer Mankwe Ndosi sings, “We make the future together” and “no one is coming to save us because we are the ones that we need.”
The ending almost feels too hopeful. With immigrant neighbors still facing violence, including shootings and killings, and threats to democratic processes voiced by those with immense power, I don’t feel hopeful that community resistance can solve our biggest problems. But as Ndosi sang, no one else is coming to save us.
All three of these works directly confront a world saturated with violence. The creators remind us that the most vital art takes an uncompromising, decisive point of view.
“Sweet Revenge” performs at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 14, Thursday, Oct. 15, Friday, Oct. 16, and Saturday, Oct. 17 at Red Eye Theater, 2213 Snelling Ave., Mpls ($0-$35). More information here.
“PREM | Love: An Occupation” performs at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 15, Friday, Oct. 16, and Saturday, Oct. 17 at 7:30 p.m. at the Southern Theater, 1420 S. Washington Ave. ($0-$50). More information here.
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