The Flower Shop Project is pleased to announce the first production of its 2010 season. Written by Randy Wyatt, the playwright behind FSP’s 2009 success 9x9x9, mint follows Charlie, a young man dealing with the death of his father and struggling with his mother’s failing mental health. The production will open April 2 and continue on April 3, 9 and 10 at the Bryant-Lake Bowl Cabaret Theater in Minneapolis.  All shows begin at 7:00 pm, with doors opening at 6:00 pm.  Tickets are $12-$15/Pay What You Can and $10 for Fringe Button Holders.  For reservations, call 612-825-8949.  Directed by Brenna Jones, mint will feature local actors Stephen Moeller, Scot Moore, Kyle Orf, Jessie Rae Rayle and Laura Wiebers.   Learn more about these great actors at our Meet the Cast page.

Playwright Randy Wyatt is a graduate of Minnesota State University-Mankato and is currently the Theatre Program Chair at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI.  Wyatt has had his works featured across the U.S. by such organizations as the Coda Theatre Project in Austin, TX, The Black Hills Theatre Co. in SD and the National Gay and Lesbian Theatre Festival in Columbus, OH.  mint was first written as a one act while Wyatt was studying for his MFA at MSU-Mankato.  The original production one first place in the 2006 one-act play competition in the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival.  After that, it was expanded into a full length play and has bee produced at MSU-Mankato, in Kansas and at the Third Coast Playwriting Festival in Michigan.

Though the action in mint centers around the deterioration of Charlie’s mother, the real drama arises when his Aunt Sheralyn, an evangelical Christian, discovers Charlie’s boyfriend making dinner in the family’s kitchen.  This discord, Wyatt says, was inspired by conflicts in his own life and solidified by a conversation with a friend of his.  “He said ‘I don’t see how there’s ever going to be any sort of conversation between evangelicals and the gay community. This does not seem like an issue there’ll ever be common ground about,’” Wyatt says. “And I started thinking, ‘That’s what ‘mint’ is kind of about.’ And so the common ground that I think is there is family.”