Bronx playwright Michi Barall is bringing her play Drawing Lessons center stage, where she examines the challenges that youth face from the perspective of a young graphic artist. The play will run from Oct. 8 through Nov. 10 on The Children’s Theatre Company Cargill Stage in Minneapolis. Opening night took place on Oct. 12.

 

Barall is a New York City-based actor, playwright, and academic who lives in Riverdale. She described Drawing Lessons as being “like a middle-grade graphic memoir set in the ‘90s in Minneapolis, featuring a Korean-American, 12-year-old protagonist come to life on stage.”

 

Drawing Lessons deals with subject matters such as alienation, loss, friendship, family dynamics, and self-expression, and Barall said it is best suited to upper elementary, middle school, high school students and their families. The play will feature projections of live drawings of cartoons and graphic novels.

 

“What’s fun for me, and I hope will be fun for the audience, is that theater isn’t something you read on a page,” Barall said. “It really is something that you experience in a dimensional way and even though our images are 2-D, they’re flat illustrations. It is also this kind of combination of the 3-D world of the actors and the liveness of that setting and the visual kind of interface, which is super spectacular, and also a really important part of the storytelling.”

 

Barrall added, “It’s been, like, so much magic to just watch the illustrations come to life. The illustrations are a combination of locations, so all of our locations, whether it’s a backdrop or home, all of those backdrops are illustrated and projected.”

 

Barrall said she began working on the project before the COVID-19 pandemic, and has worked hard with her team to bring the idea to life.

 

“My feeling has always been that you can affirm community, right? So, this Korean American family, affirming that community in a kind of politics of recognition but at the same time, this is a very cosmopolitan world, and a very diverse world, and they all interface with school in different ways,” she said.

 

The adult cast of Drawing Lessons features Katie Bradley as Gomo, Jim Lichtscheidl as Paul, Darrick Mosley as Jon, Matt Park as Matt, and Sophina Saggau as Miss Evans.

 

The student cast of Drawing Lessons features Malia Berg as Lia, De’Anthony Jackson as Omar, Olivia Lampert and Mars Niemi alternating as Kate, Anders Thielen as Jason, and Cullen Van Ranst as Justin/Anderson.

 

Barrall said, “Part of what we want to communicate is that school can be a really harsh, punitive place when you aren’t good at the two things that school wants you to be good at, which is mostly reading or writing, and also math skills. I think schools can be a place where kids feel like they are failing, and we wanted to really affirm that there are so many different ways to process the world, and to contribute to a vision of the world that is expansive.”

 

Barrall holds a degree from Stanford University, an M.F.A from NYU, and a PhD from Columbia. She has taught at Columbia, NYU, and MIT and is currently on the faculty at Purchase College.

 

The Original conception for Drawing Lessons is by Michi Barall, and Jack Tamburri, who is also serving as the director. Drawing Lessons is co-commissioned by Ma-Yi Theater Company, located in New York, and the Children’s Theatre Company, located in Minneapolis.

 

Tamburri said, “I have been a fan of comic books and cartooning since before I could read. In fact, comics taught me how to read. “One of the reasons I got into making theatre was because I wanted to create visual art but had no confidence in my drawing. So now, as a director, I make drawings out of people.”

 

Drawing Lessons has a run time of 90 minutes with one 20-minute intermission. Tickets start at $15. For more information, visit childrenstheatre.org.