Out There 20: The TEAM

It's a good month for the Walker Art Center to bring The TEAM (Theatre of the Emerging American Moment) to Minnesota. In these media-analysis-filled days following the Iowa caucuses, we are constantly reminded of a unique transitional moment provided by the plain-spoken folk in fly-over land. Whether they are visionary or contrary remains to be seen, but New York's The TEAM handles both possibilities with a work that evokes an absurdist, almost Springsteenian vision of a country where truth and myth constantly collide. Often compared to the seminal Wooster Group, the troupe combines movement theater, satire, appropriation, and a singular logic into a fearless, and often rigorous, form of contemporary performance. The story? A group of Midwestern kids cope with being orphaned by the Rapture, Dorothy returns to Kansas by falling out of a plane, an alien shows up pregnant, and Bobby Kennedy returns from the dead. It's all about the red state/blue state divide, in some respects, but there's something bigger at stake here. Perhaps the American soul hasn't been sold yet, and if that's the case, The TEAM are certainly determined to keep it off eBay.
Jan. 17-19, 8 p.m., 2008