It's kickoff time for gridiron drama 'Colossal'

In the thundering words of a famous sportscaster: Let's get ready to rummm-blllle.

Mixed Blood Theatre has transformed its Minne­apolis auditorium into a gridiron for "Colossal," a play that takes its football-set themes to theatrical extremes. The drama, which opens Friday, has a squad of more than 20 actors, many of them wearing helmets and pads. Instead of three or four acts, the production has four 15-minute quarters, each counted down on a large scoreboard. There's a half-time show.

In other words, "Colossal," which has full-contact hits, is perhaps the closest thing to a live football game that you'll see onstage.

"A guiding principle of this play is that all the actors should be wiped out when the show is over," said playwright Andrew Hinderaker. "This play is not an abstraction of, or gesture toward, something that's physical, exhausting and violent. It's the realization of those things."

"Colossal" is timely and topical, even though it has been years in the making. It is like "Billy Elliott" in reverse.

Mike, whose father is a modern dance teacher, takes up football, and is recruited to play college ball, where he falls in love with a teammate. But he suffers a severe spinal injury, which ends his playing days and also redefines his relationships.

The play draws in football fans, disability advocates and those who appreciate its examination of constructs of masculinity.

"Football lifts up a masculinity where violence is part of the language, and the expression of that violence is at the core of it," Hinderaker said. "The emotions accompanying violence — whether frustration, rage, sorrow, even vulnerability — are themselves manifested through violence. Two men, in this context, can hit each other as hard as they possibly can, but to hold each other's hands is a dangerous act."

The playwright grew up in Green Bay, Wis, where he regularly attended Packers games (after living and working in Chicago, he now counts himself a Bears fan). He began writing "Colossal" more than three years ago as a challenge while in graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin.

To get produced, most playwrights craft plays with small casts. Write your dream work, a professor encouraged him. He did, and took it to the Kennedy Center for a workshop. That is where Mixed Blood founder Jack Reuler saw it.

"This is the quintessential Mixed Blood play," Reuler said. "It's got dancers; it's got athletes; it's got actors who do all of those things. It tackles 50 things in 80 minutes."

Director Will Davis, who went to school with the playwright, said staging "Colossal" makes him feel like a coach.

"We've spent a lot of time working the rigorous precision of how to hit each other and how to take a hit," he said. "We want the audience to feel that visceral thing that you get from football."

Davis relishes the challenge of the play.

"We're trying to build something epic inside of an intimate story about masculinity," he said. "We're delving into questions of what it costs to talk about your feelings. We're looking at languages, both spoken orally and with the body. In this play, sentences begin in words and end in actions. It's really something revolutionary in theater."

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390