Press

PRESS & PUBLICITY

BEST DIRECTOR: Laura Leffler
By City Pages | April 18, 2018 | Click to read the full feature

Savage Umbrella’s artistic director Laura Leffler takes actors and audiences out of their comfort zones, crafting productions that have a unique sense of emotional honesty. Her company has also built an admirable practice of revisiting past productions, trying new approaches with new casts and spaces. This year Leffler led remounts of The Awakening and Ex-Gays, with the latter gaining gut-wrenching new life in a production so intimate it felt like you were eavesdropping. Few local directors have such a consistent gift for pushing their actors and creative teams to new heights every time.

Ex-Gays: Not a Str8 Remount
Photo by Carl Atiya Swanson

Savage Umbrella's dramedy 'Ex-Gays' is a moving protest piece
By Jay Gabler, City Pages | September 18, 2017 | Click to read the full feature

Fittingly for a show staged in a church, Ex-Gays is a little miracle. It works as a comedy, it works as a drama. It also works as an act of protest against not just the extreme (though very real) sites of "conversion therapy," but against more common microaggressions and exclusionary assumptions. It's a polished production that hits a raw nerve, and it's a powerful experience.

June
Photo by Dan Norman

Savage Umbrella’s Hypnotic & Miraculous Look Into Lesbian Life in the 1950s
By John Townsend, Lavender Magazine | February 23, 2016 | Click to read the full feature

Savage Umbrella is a theater company revered for the scrupulous research of historical productions. Though they’re not taking us to ancient Greece this time around, they definitely transport us once again. This time, the destination is the lesbian underworld of an American metropolis in the 1950s, years before Stonewall; a time when lesbian bars were targeted by police raids and when Joseph McCarthy’s anticommunist witch hunt triggered fears in much the same way Islamophobia has simmered in the post-9/11 era and homophobia did in the AIDS crisis hysteria of the Reagan years. [ . . . ] The entire ensemble is simply superb as they vividly embody the physical and psychic types of queer women quite particular to the 1950s when the terms “lesbian” and “homosexual” were unmentionable. The self-monitoring of an oppressed class of people is viscerally rendered by everyone. We can literally feel the oppressiveness of time. There’s something miraculous in this achievement on stage.

Vinland Workshop Presentation
Photo by Hannah K. Holman

In the Zone: Savage Umbrella Creates Space for Artists,
Audiences & Meaningful Discussion
By Kyle Mianulli, Creative Enterprise Zone | July 20, 2015 | Click to read the full feature

The audience often plays an integral role in Savage Umbrella’s productions. “We’re equal parts trying to serve the artists we work with and the audiences,” Leffler McCabe says. “We like to talk about creating space for critical conversation.”

By leveraging the avenues art can create to discuss challenging subject matter, Savage Umbrella is able to breach topics in a meaningful way not easily achieved, otherwise. “Art allows you to transcend that normal dinner table conversation,” says Hannah K. Holman, managing director with Savage Umbrella.

These Are the Men
Photo by Carl Atiya Swanson

“These Are The Men” Director on Jocasta
By John Townsend, Lavender Magazine | April 7, 2015 | Click to read the full feature

Bolan relates that Jocasta “wants the narrative of her story to make sense, and to be worthwhile, and just like those of us living on one line, sometimes it’s impossible to do. She does not find people in her life with whom to connect, to bond, to make sense of her world – she has only her family, a tangled web of brothers and husbands and children – so she creates another place in her mind where she might learn to fit the pieces together and find solace. That place can be worrisome at times, but also has the power to provide clarity and healing.”

These Are the Men
Photo by Carl Atiya Swanson

These are the Men
By Liz Byron, Aisle Say Twin Cities | March 15, 2015 | Click to read the full feature

Walking into the Southern Theater to see a retelling of a story first performed on stage over two millennia ago is a wonderful experience. The contrast of the exposed modern lighting and minimalist set pieces to the beautiful, century-old proscenium arch is a fantastic metaphor for the show itself, blending old and new.

I highly recommend this new play. It is poignant, with a surprising number of lighthearted moments for such a tragic tale. Blake E Bolan and Laura Leffler-McCabe‘s script brings new depth to an old story, reinvigorating it for a new generation.

The Ravagers
Photo by Staciaann Photography

Wendy Lehr and 'the politics of getting people in the room together'
By Jim Walsh, MinnPost | May 12, 2014 | Click to read the full feature

[Wendy Lehr:] They’re so cool, because they’re all making their work. There are so many little strange fabulous invigorating companies now. I can’t even tell you what their names all are. A couple years ago I saw just a fabulous piece Savage Umbrella did. It was some weird Greek play about two brothers, and it was ... in like an old bombed-out theater, and it was cold but it was great. And the gestalt of it, all of those things fit together so brilliantly.

The Ravagers
Photo by Staciaann Photography

Best of 2011-2012: The Ravagers
By Matt McGeachy, Minnesota Playlist | September 12, 2012 | Click to read the full feature

[When] it comes to what has stuck with me all season long, and what continues to excite me the most, I keep returning to a unique and thrilling experience at the old Hollywood Theater in Northeast Minneapolis, where I saw Savage Umbrella’s production of The Ravagers. A truly magnificent example of a compelling adaptation – in this case, from a variety of tragedies by Aeschylus, deftly handled by company members Blake E. Bolan and Laura Leffler-McCabe – and a model to be emulated for how to use a theatrical space to its fullest potential, The Ravagers filled me with excitement and dread when I saw it in November, and it continues to excite me as I contemplate it eight months later.