It is so warmly rewarding to walk into a theater with meager expectations and walk out genuinely moved by a young artist brave and articulate enough to share her painful story. Ashley Kress comes from hard places, yet she retains a soft place for people in her life who raised her, inspired her and in one important case rejected her. She writes with insight and spare honesty, avoiding sentimentality even when the details of her story beg for our sympathy. This is a beautiful example of how personal storytelling becomes theater of the smallest and most effective kind. (4 p.m. Fri., 2:30 p.m. Sat.; Huge Theater, 3037 Lyndale Av. S.)

Graydon Royce