Author: Christy DeSmith

In the past hundred years, women have successfully appropriated menswear, from slacks and dungarees to business suits—but the exchange hasn’t exactly gone in the other direction. But lookit! Finally it has at least become socially permissible for men of all stripes to carry purses—or satchels, if you will, or just plain old bags. It’s only…

The Old Testament’s most difficult book, the Book of Job, planted the seed of this new play. From the “unknowable nature of God” therein, which local playwright Alan Berks described as “one of the scariest things I can think of,” a new ghost story was born. Berks (who wrote the 2006 Fringe Festival hit, How…

This is the first time a Sarah Ruhl play has been produced in the Twin Cities since the thirty-something hotshot’s Eurydice became the hit of Off-Broadway this summer. The Clean House is an earlier product of Ruhl’s fantastical imagination, and one with an important distinction from Eurydice: Even though it was a Pulitzer finalist in…

Contemporary dance seems an unlikely vehicle for exploring our culture’s obsession with physical perfection, what with all the buff beauties prancing about. But that didn’t stop local choreographer Matthew Janczewski from assembling an impressive cast of collaborators to help realize his heartfelt, movement-based rebuke of superficiality—in fact, it’s his most ambitious project to date. The…

The week’s big event is MNfashion Weekend, starting Wednesday (well, sort of) and lasting through Sunday. I made a guest appearance in yesterday’s Strib to talk about the lineup, and to recommend some of the happenings. But, of course, there has been at least one update since I wrote the piece: I’ve since learned that…