Dozens of Twin Cities actors plug a fifth season of 'Theater People'

Stacia Rice, in web series "Theater People," which is raising money for a fifth season. /Rough-Hewn Pictures

A fifth season of offstage melodrama, annoying side hustles and Stacia Rice's judgmental eyebrow is in the offing.

"Theater People," the web series that has employed more than 160 Twin Cities actors in its previous four seasons, is raising cash for a fifth. About 30 of the actors, including Shanan Custer, Jeffrey Hatcher, Alex Choi, Sam Landman and Rice, will appear in a new video every hour of Give to the Max Day, Nov. 15, with ongoing fundraising at the web series' page after that.

Written and directed by Matthew G. Anderson, "Theater People" features Rice in each season, playing an actor who casts a gimlet eye on the behavior of folks in the Twin Cities theater community. The winner of awards at web festivals in Baltimore, Seoul and New Jersey, the show can be viewed at seekatv.

"When we started it, we never thought we'd do more than one. We had some creative demons we needed to exorcise -- and, when I saw 'we,' I mean Matt, who was my nanny at the time," says Rice, a veteran Twin Cities performer whose stage career (including her Torch Theater) is currently on hold while she raises her kids. 'He wanted to get something done, so he did it."

A screenwriter, Anderson had recently returned from L.A. and was looking for something to flex his creative muscles. That turned out to be "Theater People."

"I signed on, just knowing Matt's work and his bendy, messed-up mind. He writes the way my brain works, things that I think are funny and, if I were not on the show, I would certainly want to watch it," says Rice.

Anderson has a concept in mind for the fifth season, but he has not written it, and Rice says she can't wait to see what he comes up with.

"There's an energy you get from performing live, in front of people, and I don't ever want to lose that," says Rice. "But being able to work something out in the series, to capture it and see how it all gets assembled -- that's really satisfying, too."