Raw Stages 2008

While History Theatre's ongoing mission to tell Minnesota's stories on the stage remains gratifying, its annual commissioned readings of all-new work are like a big shot of espresso when one has gotten used to cream and sugar (in good coffee, mind). Thursday features Deborah Stein's The Ghosts of Summit Avenue, a dramatic trip through St. Paul's favorite haunted mansions. Friday's show is 20 Days to Find a Wife, a romantic musical about Lake Superior's first lighthouse keeper and his search for a mate. Saturday offers Tyrone and Ralph, Jeffrey Hatcher's work about Tyrone Guthrie and Ralph Rapson working to build the old Guthrie (and the American regional theater movement). The series ends on Sunday with Invasion of the Colored People, a satirical musical about the life of the first African American nuclear physicist hired by Honeywell in the 1950s.
Thursdays-Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., Jan. 13, 2 p.m. Starts: Jan. 10. Continues through Jan. 13, 2008