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Show: 3
Title: Holy O
Category: Comedy / Drama / Improv / Solo Show / Audience participation / LGBTQIA+ Content / Religious content
By: Lauren Hance of Out of Mind Productions
Directed by: Amelia Peterson & Cathy Lam-Patrie
Location: Corner Coffee Uptown
Summary: A solo piece about a nurse who wants to become a nun, that is sweet and uplifting despite the heavy topics of religion, sex, trauma, and loss.
Highlights: Traveling artist Lauren Hance brings her hit show to Minnesota, and you should not miss the chance to see it. Performed at Corner Coffee in Uptown (an easy walk from any of the Uptown Fringe theaters), it's intimate and participatory, but not in a scary way. Vera (short for Veracity ) wakes up from a nap to see all of us sitting there, assuming we're saints. Because since moving next door to a couple of nuns, she's been having weird and rapturous experiences while praying. This leads her to want to become a nun, but she's not sure about giving up the things she'll need to give up. One of which is clothes, so she asks for our help deciding what to keep and what to give away. She offers three choices, each with a story, and someone in the audience chooses one, making this a choose-your-own-adventure type show that is never the same twice. Each story is about herself or someone she's met in her life or career as a midwife and later as a school nurse. Some are funny, some are tragic, all are affecting. Lauren is so good at what she does, taking whatever the audience gives her and making it part of the show. I'm typically not a fan of audience participation, but this works so well, and feels intimate and communal as she looks us in the eyes while telling these stories with real emotion (if you don't want to participate, don't sit in the front row or on the center aisle and don't offer a suggestion, and you'll be fine). She prays for the people whose stories she tells, and blesses audience members who help her, but not in a creepy preachy way, rather in a sweet and loving way that somehow makes you feel healed. Whether or not Vera decides to become a nun - you'll have to see the show to find out.