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Mixed Blood's top 10

Highlights from Jack Reuler's tenure at one of the Twin Cities' most adventurous theaters.

By Chris Hewitt

July 5, 2022 at 10:00AM

Regina Marie Williams played Mama Nadi and Bruce A. Young was Cristian in Mixed Blood Theatre’s Ivey Award-winning “Ruined.” (Harkness, Kyndell, Star Tribune/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

1976

The theater's first world premieres include "Badd High," by Jack Reuler and Carl Lumbly, the Minneapolis native who would become a regular on TV's "Cagney and Lacey." Lumbly co-starred with Faye Price, whose most recent Mixed Blood appearance was in this past spring's "Imagine a U.S. Without Racism."

1979

"African Jazz" is the first of many world premieres written by Ken LaZebnik. The most recent? Last year's "Animate."

1980

"Warp I, II and III" becomes one of the most ambitious shows of a tiny company that always had big dreams. The "science-fiction epic" is three full-length plays, loosely inspired by Marvel comic books.

1980

Debut of "Dr. King's Dream," featuring Warren Bowles. It plays more than 2,000 performances, at the firehouse and on tour, and Bowles (who suffered an onstage heart attack in 2011's "Neighbors") would become a Mixed Blood mainstay.

1986

Musical revue "A ... My Name Is Alice" begins the first of several runs, logging 520 performances over five years.

1988

Don Cheadle, 17 years before "Hotel Rwanda" earned him an Oscar nomination, stars in "Liquid Skin" and "The Boys Next Door." (He later plays Tom Joad in Mixed Blood's "The Grapes of Wrath.")

1995

The cast of "They're Coming to Make it Brighter" includes Aditi Kapil, who met Reuler as a student at Macalester College. She'll become a multiyear playwright-in-residence (works produced include "Orange" and "The Deaf Duckling") and frequent actor ("Next to Normal").

2009

Mixed Blood wins the Ivey Award for outstanding production for "Ruined," the first post-New York staging of Lynn Nottage's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama.

2015

A blistering, inventive "An Octoroon" is a highlight, with the theater again bringing the work of Pulitzer Prize finalist Branden Jacobs-Jenkins ("Neighbors," "Gloria") to the Twin Cities.

2017

Reuler argues that the future of theater is not in traditional theaters but in bringing work to places where audiences feel comfortable. Experiments in staging plays at a convention center and Como Zoo demonstrated what he meant, as did "Safe at Home," a progressive drama performed at several locations in the St. Paul Saints ballpark now known as CHS Field.