When Workhouse Theatre artistic director Jeff Redman chose to adapt Dave Louapre and Dan Sweetman’s series of graphic novels, “Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children,” he called in the experts.
“I cold-called Steve Schroer at Hardcover (Theater) when we knew that we wanted to create a show that adapted three of the short stories,” Redman says. “Hardcover specializes in that, it is part of their mission and we specialize in producing high-quality work — so I asked them if they wanted to be involved and they accepted the challenge.”
The production opens this weekend at Workhouse’s home in the Camden area of north Minneapolis. It’s the latest in a long stretch of interest in the material for Redman. “I fell in love with the stories in college. I actually produced one of the shows for the 1999 Fringe,” he says.
The show presents three of the stories from the series: “Beneath the Useless Universe,” “I am Paul’s Dog,” and “By the Light of the Screaming Moon.” The appeal of the tales — which are more like illustrated stories than traditional comic books — is their rich narratives and unusual turns.
An attack by an inflatable Elvis and other unexpected turns
“They … deal with issues like happiness, loss, loneliness, motivation and they do it in a way that you wouldn’t expect: through the eyes of a dog, clowns hell-bent on destruction, the last druid of his kind, a group of bachelors on their way to see a Donkey Show only to wind up missing it and getting attacked by an inflatable Elvis,” Redman says.
Louapre and Sweetman’s work created other challenges for two theaters. “They are mostly narratives with little dialogue, so you have to rely on your sense of what the story is about and the imagery to get the feel for the show. Much of the dialogue needs to be created and that is completely challenging when much of the story contains no actual lines of dialogue,” Redman says. “Adapting narrative stories with very little dialogue is very difficult — it requires you to imagine and visualize on a completely different level.”
Workhouse, which has been around for five seasons, is proud of its north Minneapolis location. Redman sees plenty of potential in the oft-ignored (at an artistic level at least) parts of Minneapolis.
“Over the last five years there has been a growth in arts on the north side through Northside Arts Collective, Camden Music School and the Capri. We have been very much a part of that as well as helping spur some of it on. When we walked home with the Ivey (for its production of “’Night, Mother”) it definitely belongs to the north side as well as to Workhouse,” he says.
“Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children” runs March 6-21 at the Warren, 4400 Osseo Road, Minneapolis. Tickets are $10 to $12 and can be purchased by calling 612-386-5763 or online.
