Theater Mu Unveils 2024/25 Season Featuring Two World Premieres & More

Theater Mu’s 2024/25 mainstage season, entitled “the Depths of Us,” focuses largely on queer and South Asian stories, and each speaks to the profound hope and care people are capable of. The line-up includes two world premieres, one with Stages Theatre Company; an Obie- and GLAAD award-winning play that has been part of the Asian American theater canon since the late 1990s; and a co-presentation with Jungle Theater. 

“Our vision at Mu is to widen the circles of the stories we’re telling so that we’re representing the vastness of our diaspora and how the Asian American experience intersects with other marginalized stories,” says outgoing artistic director Lily Tung Crystal. “As full, complicated, multifaceted people, we reject classification and stereotype. Each of these plays features characters who grapple with identity, family, and friendship and land on the other side with love.” 

Theater Mu is kicking off its mainstage productions with the world premiere of Ankita Raturi’s Fifty Boxes of Earth, featuring choreography by internationally renowned Ananya Chatterjea, the founding director of Saint Paul-based Ananya Dance Theatre, and directed by Kt Shorb (Feb 27-Mar 16, 2025, at Park Square Theatre). Raturi’s play is coined “a creative response to Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” and it examines xenophobia, belonging, and community. In this version, the newcomer isn’t a vampire but an immigrant planting a strange, fantastical garden amid the neighborhood’s plots of tomatoes and peas. 

Next in the season is a more direct book adaptation—the world premiere of Tae Keller’s Caldecott-winning When You Trap a Tiger (Mar 14-30, 2025). Katie Hae Leo is adapting the story, and it will be directed by 2021/22 Mu Emerging Playwrights’ Circle alum Emma Y. Lai and produced in collaboration with Stages Theatre Company. This is the third consecutive season Mu has had a collaboration—and world premiere—with Stages, and this season’s story follows a girl as she tries to make a deal with a folkloric tiger to save her grandmother from illness.

While Mu’s mainstage has focused on new and recent work by Asian Americans in the past few years, the first summer production is Diana Son’s Stop Kiss (June 12-29, 2025, at the Gremlin Theatre). The Obie- and GLAAD award-winning play which made its world premiere Off-Broadway in 1998, and the story jumps back and forward in time as two women’s happenstance acquaintance causes their lives to change forever as they explore their connection further.  

The Depths of Us ends with Adil Mansoor’s Amm(i)gone, co-directed by Lyam B. Gabel and Mansoor, and co-presented with Jungle Theater for the first time in the region (July 2025, exact date TBA). This one-person play began with Mansoor’s real dramaturgical collaboration with his mother around the Greek classic Antigone, but it soon grew into an autobiographical piece that uses recorded conversations, Quran teachings, text, and imagery to delve into their love for each other in the face of his homosexuality and her concern for his afterlife.

“Mu is at its strongest when we are a reflection of our Minnesota and Asian American community. This season’s productions, which include queer and South Asian stories, represent many in our community,” says managing director Anh Thu T. Pham. “At a time when there has been the highest number of hate crimes targeting individuals based on their sexual orientation or gender identity and a rising number of hate crimes against people based on ethnicity and religion, it is more important than ever that these stories are seen.”

Before the mainstage season even begins, Theater Mu is already “widening its circles” with a revamped New Eyes Festival, its annual free play reading series, from Nov 22-24, 2024, at the Playwrights’ Center. Instead of selection by the artistic director and the Mu literary committee, as in the past, Mu is also holding an open call for new play submissions from Asian American voices across the country. 

Interim artistic director Katie Bradley, who will be executing Tung Crystal’s season, says, “I am thrilled to be shepherding Mu’s 2024/25 season as interim artistic director. The lineup of shows is beautiful and thought-provoking, and I’m excited for audiences to experience them in the coming months.”

Theater Mu’s 2024/25 season

New Eyes Festival

a play reading festival ft. submitted works
Nov 22-24, 2024, at Playwrights’ Center

Fifty Boxes of Earth

a world premiere by Ankita Raturi
directed by Kt Shorb 
choreography by Ananya Chatterjea
Feb 27-Mar 16, 2025, at Park Square Theatre

When You Trap a Tiger

a world premiere by Katie Hae Leo
based on the story by Tae Keller
directed by Emma Y. Lai 
collaboration with Stages Theatre Company
Mar 14-30, 2025, at Stages Theatre Company

Stop Kiss

by Diana Son
directed by TBA
June 12-29, 2025, at Gremlin Theatre

Amm(i)gone

created by Adil Mansoor
co-directed by Lyam B. Gabel & Adil Mansoor
co-presented with the Jungle Theater
July 2025, exact date TBA, at the Jungle Theater
 

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