Dominic Orlando, one of the working playwrights at Workhaus Collective, will get his latest piece on stage this weekend at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis. "The Sense of What Should Be" features actors Dylan Frederick and Joanna Harmon as youngsters in an improbable love story. John Middleton plays a dissolute pastor.

In Orlando's scenario, a 16-year-old boy stoked on comic-book adventure makes a bid for ultimate power the old-fashioned way -- via manipulation, extortion and revenge. In a world of incompetent or corrupt adults, the kid takes over and even gets the girl along the way. Sort of.

"There was a time in my life when I was that kid," Orlando said. "It's extremely autobiographical, not in a factual way but an emotional way."

The play is about heroes and villains and Orlando has written from the villain's perspective, even if he makes that antihero pay a price.

"It sympathizes with him without agreeing with him," he said. "It does not let him off the hook."

Besides the personal story involved, Orlando said he didn't set out with a specific intention. He worked from the play's final images and filled in gaps during a trip through the Cascade Mountains. He set the action near Seattle and let the play evolve as characters roamed through his head.

Beyond that, Orlando won't say much. Different viewers will have different ideas, he said, and they can figure it out for themselves.

"I hesitate to be the referee in those arguments ahead of time," he said.

(8 p.m. today-Sat. & Thu., 4 p.m. Sun., Playwrights' Center, 2301 E. Franklin Av., Mpls. $8-$15. 612-332-7481, ext. 20)

The Great American Trailer Park Musical

This is the kind of thing Minneapolis Musical Theater does best -- a campy, trashy spoof. And I mean that in the best way. This hayseed opera got its start in Florida (where else?) and attracted enough attention at the New York Music Theater Festival in 2004 to win an off-Broadway slot the following season. Big-city reviewers, though, gave it the gimlet eye as a one-dimensional hootenany built on stereotypes.

Steven J. Meerdink directs MMT's production. Look for MMT regulars Kristine and Thomas Karki and Kim Kivens in the cast. This is the troupe's second year at Illusion Theater, in the Hennepin Center for the Arts. Kevin Hansen, the executive director, said it has been nice to have a theater that is actually a theater as opposed to previous spaces that had "their own unique limitations." (7:30 p.m. today-Sun. & Thu., Illusion Theater, 528 Hennepin Av. S., Mpls. $25-$28. 612-339-4944 or www.aboutmmt.org.)

The Nerd

Playwright Larry Shue's first hit had the simplest trappings of farce -- a boorish dude flops in on an old acquaintance and ruins a promising dinner party. Shue scored with this play and "The Foreigner" in a career cut short by a plane crash. "The Nerd" hit Broadway in 1981 and has since been a solid comedy staple.

Starting Gate Productions, which performs at the Mounds Theatre in St. Paul's Dayton's Bluff neighborhood, will mount "The Nerd" with a cast that includes Dwight Gunderson, Jane Froiland, Daniel Ian Joeck and Luke Weber. Richard Jackson directs. (7:30 p.m. today-Sat., 2 p.m. Sun., Mounds Theatre, 1029 Hudson Rd., St. Paul. $10-$18. 651-645-3503 or www.startinggate.org.)

A Path Home

This piece at In the Heart of the Beast caught my eye because it's a new work by Masanari Kawahara. A longtime designer and performer at HOBT, Kawahara sought here to tell the story of "Thich Nhat Hanh," a Vietnamese monk, poet and peace activist. He was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967, after playing a central role in the Vietnamese peace movement.

Now 83 years old, he has become an important figure in the development of western Buddhism. Kawahara has been with HOBT since 1998 and helped create "GOTAMA: Journey to the Buddha" in 2006. He will be the sole puppeteer, accompanied by live music. (7:30 p.m. today-Sat., 2 p.m. Sun., 1500 E. Lake St., Mpls. $12-$17. 612-721-2535 or www.hobt.org.)

Landscape of the Body

This John Guare play, a regional premiere, is being done by a new entity, Prufrock Theatre. The production staff is pretty good: director Leah Cooper, music director Michael Pearce Donley and lighting designer Jeff Bartlett. Guare's concept is: a woman speaking from the grave about her unfulfilled life. It's been staged three times off-Broadway.

Michael Feingold, in the Village Voice, called this a "wonder tale full of seemingly total improbabilities." The story, he wrote, "if stared at too long, either crumbles into meaninglessness or makes complete sense." (7:30 p.m. today-Sat., Mon., Thu., Minneapolis Theatre Garage, 711 W. Franklin Av., Mpls.; $8-$18 -- donate what you can, Mon. 1-800-838-3006 or www.prufrocktheatre.org)

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Sandbox Theatre's "June of Arc" sold out at the Minnesota Fringe Festival, so maybe it was a great production or maybe they had a great marketing director -- or both. The troupe creates new work through ensemble exploration, which seems a worthy endeavor.

This time out, they promise a new look at the famous Goethe tale of a man so entranced with his search for happiness that he makes a deal with the devil. I note with interest these names in the creative team: Ryan Hill, Christopher Kehoe, Kathy Kohl, Heather Stone and Wade Vaughn. (8 p.m. today-Sat., 7 p.m. Sun., Red Eye, 15 W. 14th St., Mpls. $15-$25. 612-554-1302.)

Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299