By Maya Comer

The Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies (TDPS) has announced the mainstage productions for the upcoming school year. “We have a great lineup set up,” says Bennifer Quaked, who is directing two of the three shows. “We’ll be first holding a staged reading of Through the Bulletin Board, the famous anti-musical.” A poll of Grinnell’s theater nerds (n = 2) revealed that none of them had heard of the supposedly famous show, nor were they sure what an ‘anti-musical’ even was. When a B&S reporter relayed this information to Prof. Quaked, she rolled her eyes. “It was the biggest hit at the 2008 Port Moresby Inter-Transnational Performance Art Showcase. Absolutely redefined the anti-musical genre. Looks like somebody wasn’t paying attention in my Intro to Performance Studies class.”

The second mainstage show is a dance performance curated by music professor I’Put HerInMyEye and student assistant Cultura LePropriation ‘27. “We’re playing with the flexible borders between human and puppet,” says LePropriation. “Before I came to Grinnell, I only knew about puppets through Jim Henson and the haunted marionette workshop in my backwards, uncultured small town in east-central Minnesota [editor’s note: she’s from Minneapolis]. But Professor HerInMyEye introduced me to Balinese culture and puppetry. They do things a little differently there, you know. I just feel so… spiritually connected. And I know that the audience will also feel that connection when they see the performance. It’ll leave you wondering if the performers are people inside puppets, puppets inside people, or maybe even puppets inside puppets and people inside people. Or maybe the audience is the puppet, or maybe the stage…” The B&S cannot print the rest of LePropriation’s quote because our reporter got bored and walked away.

The final, most intensive mainstage show is also directed by Bennifer Quaked. Incorporating full sets, costumes, lighting design, and more, the department of TDPS pitches it as “King Lear, except they’re all mice, living in a barn in France, during WWII, and it’s a jukebox musical to songs by Björk, and all of the actors are neurospicy people of color, and they deliver all their dialogue in a mix of ASL and Jamaican patois, and the audience sits underneath the stage, and they watch the whole thing through kaleidoscopes, and it’s lit entirely by headlamps they all wear.” The production has been repeatedly postponed as the producers attempt to find actors whose presence in the show wouldn’t be unthinkably offensive, prompting a push from some production members to practice “close enough” casting. “Maybe we don’t have enough neurospicy people interested, but there are plenty of talented neuroumami actors who are missing out on these roles,” says casting director Timetou Select ‘28.

Performance dates for all three shows are not yet decided, although the TDPS department assures Grinnellians that they will be at the most inconvenient times possible, and that anyone currently enrolled in a TDPS course must attend each show and write a 12-page thesis, worth 80% of the final grade, on the shows’ directing. Auditions occurred shortly before anyone arrived back to campus, and rehearsals run from midnight to 3 AM on weekdays and 5:30-7:30 AM on weekends. Whenever tickets are sold, they’ll be available in a secret place at a secret time that you have to solve a riddle to know. Until then, we’ll continue to wonder what an anti-musical is.