Act a Lady

Lanesboro, Minnesota’s Commonweal Theatre Company is known for mounting quality productions of challenging works, in what is apparently part of a local tradition. During Prohibition area men came in from the fields to stage a period melodrama—dressed as women. Playwright Jordan Harrison’s Act a Lady (originally commissioned by Commonweal) brings humor and intrigue to the story of that gender-bending segment of Minnesota history. In his play about a play, women take the men’s parts, and the experience of trying on another sexual identity raises passions that didn’t often get aired nearly a century ago. Or so we like to think—Act a Lady may show us otherwise. Hennepin Center for the Arts, 528 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis, www.illusiontheater.org