Twin Cities stages and parks are making room for stories about Native, Hmong and Lao communities this weekend. 

Catch the world premiere of Minneapolis writer Marcie Rendon’s “Sweet Revenge” at Red Eye Theater, celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day with a weekend of arts, sports and food trucks in Maplewood, or head to St. Paul’s East Side for the first Hmong & Lao Heritage Festival. 

A Native spin on murder mystery

It took 22 years for Minneapolis playwright Marcie Rendon to get “Sweet Revenge” right. 

For years, the play sat in her drawer as a stubborn story about an inner-city Native American family living just a door away from an ice cream truck serial killer. Rendon knew the pieces were there, but the story wouldn’t click. 

Then, while attending a writing retreat to work on another manuscript, a new character walked onto the page and sat down at the table. 

“Granny Josephine appeared,” Rendon said. “Once that happened, the whole story solidified.” 

In the play, Granny Josephine lives with the weight of growing up in an American Indian boarding school. She shares a home with Maggie, a middle-aged woman hustling to make ends meet and care for her two grandchildren. 

Life in the apartment is already a balancing act, with Maggie stretching her money and navigating the realities of urban violence. When a serial killer investigation reaches her building, she finds herself pulled into the chaos. 

Crime fiction is all Rendon reads. She describes the books she loves as “airport novels,” citing Lee Child, John Sandford, Stephen King and Jonathan Kellerman as inspirations. 

It wasn’t until her early 30s that she realized she could write her own. Her Cash Blackbear murder mystery series, which debuted in 2017, follows a young Ojibwe woman investigating murders on reservations across North Dakota and Minnesota. 

Rendon found her way to theater in the late ’90s through a workshop with Spiderwoman Theater, the longest-running Indigenous theater company in the United States.

“I grew up in northern Minnesota and I didn’t know that real theater existed. I didn’t know anything, so I went to Spiderwoman because it was a Native thing and I spent the day being a tree blowing in the wind,” Rendon said. “It was just inspiring to see these women do this thing that I didn’t even know was a possibility.” 

Rendon is bringing “Sweet Revenge” to the stage with the help of co-producers Mni Giizhik Theatre Ensemble and Exposed Brick Theatre, as well as director Sequoia Hauck and assistant director Samuel Osborne-Huerta. 

For Minnesota audiences, Rendon hopes they walk away with a better understanding of what it looks like to navigate everyday life under the shadow of generational trauma. 

“Things can be so absurd and I think that in the Native community, there’s a lot of humor,” she said. “There’s a lot of things that are so bad that all you can do sometimes is just make a joke about it, laugh and move on.” 

“Sweet Revenge” makes its world premiere at Minneapolis’ Red Eye Theater this weekend. 

Indigenous Peoples’ Weekend

Want to learn how to make corn husk dolls, hand drums, candles or herbal medicine? Head to the Battle Creek Recreation Center and Regional Park in Maplewood for Indigenous People’s Weekend. 

Saturday’s festival features a youth basketball tournament, Native food trucks, an arts market, and a youth career and college fair. On Sunday morning, get active with a 5K run, a 1-mile walk or join a craft workshop. You can also learn powwow dancing, nettle weaving and quilling. 

Be sure to stop by the Sahan booth and say hello. 

New Hmong and Lao arts fest

Lake Phalen’s Picnic Island was recently renamed in honor of the late Minnesota-based Hmong American artist Tou Ger Xiong and will be grounds for the first Hmong & Lao Heritage Festival this Saturday. 

The festival begins at 10 a.m. with an opening ceremony and tribute to Xiong, who was killed in Colombia in 2023. An exhibit will trace 50 years of Hmong and Lao communities on St. Paul’s East Side, followed by a 2 p.m. fashion show and traditional dance performances from Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos and Japan. 

Food trucks will serve Hmong and Vietnamese street food, sushi, Asian-inspired BBQ and more. 

Come by the Sahan booth on Saturday. 

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