Prison Break

Ten Thousand Things has carved a unique niche in the local theater ecology, performing free shows with minimal sets and ambient light in prisons, homeless shelters, and community centers. But the company also stages paid public performances of its acute, charged theater, and this month it premieres Raskol, a new adaptation of Crime and Punishment by Kira Obolensky.

The script is the fruit of a contest in which Ten Thousand Things invited 10 playwrights to submit a new work. The challenge, according to company artistic director Michelle Hensley, was to imagine, “What if everyone was in the audience?”

“We like doing contemporary plays,” says Hensley. “But lots of playwrights tend to write for upper-middle-class audiences. A lot of those plays wouldn’t be that interesting for the people we perform for.”

“Crime and Punishment posits a central character who is ambiguous in the best of ways,” says Obolensky of Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov. “It’s a mystery—not who did it, but why he did it. He’s not a black-and-white character, not good or evil. He’s something much, much more complicated.”

Hensley and Obolensky use music to evoke Dostoevsky’s dark, swirling moods. “We decided on sort of an improvisational jazz score,” says Hensley. “Like the early days, when jazz was adventurous and wild and dark.”

Wrangling with demons, in so many words. Just the sort of struggle Ten Thousand Things tackles best.

May 8–24. Minnesota Opera Center, 620 N. 1st St., Mpls., 800-838-3006