Monster Heart

February 26 through March 5, 2022

Southern Theater, Minneapolis, MN

June 21 & 22, 2019

The Scott Reed Theater in Minocqua, WI

This dreamlike adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein perceives the classic story through the lens of the author’s life and relationships. In a feminist approach to the Gothic tale, Mary and Percy Shelley’s love affair is intertwined with that of Victor Frankenstein and his Creature in an exploration of what it means to ‘make a monster.’ The poetic text (alternately spoken or sung) is drawn not only from “Frankenstein” and other works by Mary Shelley, but also from Mary and Percy Shelley’s poems and letters to each other, letters from Lord Byron, and text by Enlightenment philosophers including Mary’s mother (noted feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft) and Jean Jacques Rousseau.

Blending dramatic text with powerful physicality, singing and puppetry, this unconventional love story explores the labor of creation, the quest for immortality, the rejection of the societal “other,” and the struggle to love in the midst of it all. Monster Heart takes the audience on a  journey from graveyard to laboratory to society salon in an examination of societal norms, asking the question: “What is in the heart of a monster?”

This production was made possible by the voters of Minnesota through grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.