The History Theatre is not missing a beat.
Three months after Richard D. Thompson took the reins from longtime leader Ron Peluso, the St. Paul company's 2023-24 season is themed around joy and resilience.
The lineup features shows about Minnesota icons and characters, both the flesh-and-blood kind and a fictional corporate spokesperson. Harold Stassen, Minnesota's youngest governor and a onetime perennial presidential candidate, gets his own musical treatment in the roster that also has a musical about Betty Crocker, the General Mills brand character who pushed crowd-pleasing recipes and home cooking.
The next season also includes Greta Oglesby's autobiographical music-infused story "Handprints"; Jessica Huang's "Blended Harmony: The Kim Loo Sisters," about a vaudeville-era swing quartet of Chinese-Polish American siblings from Minneapolis; and "A Unique Assignment," a Harrison David Rivers play set during the civil rights era.
"We're aiming to present stories for the entire community," said Thompson, likening history to pebbles dropped in water. "The ripples fold over each other, sometimes joining to make a larger ripple. All these stories do that."
Things kick off with "The Boy Wonder," composer Keith Hovis' musical about Stassen. The animating question the show asks is one that the Republican politician also raised during his decades-long Bernie Sanders-esque career: Who will stand up for American democracy? Laura Leffler directs (Oct. 5-29).
Denise Prosek, co-founder of Theater Latté Da, composed the music and wrote lyrics for "I Am Betty," about the corporate icon whose different iterations over the decades tracked advances and setbacks of women in 20th-century America. The book of "Betty" is by Cristina Luzárraga, who also wrote additional lyrics (Nov. 22-Dec. 23).
Oglesby has been a powerhouse on stages in the Twin Cities, on Broadway and across the country. She charts her path in "Handprints," which she also wrote. Her performance is accompanied by music director Sanford Moore (Jan. 25-Feb. 18, 2024).
