Melancholy Play

You heard it here first, folks: Sarah Ruhl is the hottest contemporary playwright in the country right now, andher work is particularly popular in Minneapolis. While Ruhl’s The Clean House continues at Mixed Blood (through November 18), 3 Sticks, a gem of a troupe, takes on Ruhl’s remarkable Melancholy Play. (There’s more on the horizon, including Ten Thousand Things’ production of Ruhl’s Eurydicein February.) This contemporary farce concerns Ruhl’s distinctionbetween depression and melancholy—the latter, she postures, can be abeautiful, even healthy, thing—but that’s not to say this is heavymaterial. After all, one character is so melancholic she turns into analmond. And the almond, as Ruhl writes in her notes for the play, isshaped the very same as the amygdala, the part of the human brain that processes emotion.

7 p.m., Bryant Lake Bowl Theater, 810 W. Lake St., Minneapolis; 612-825-8949; $12-$15.