20% Theatre Company, a company devote to female and transgender theater arts, will present Gina Young’s Femmes: A Tragedy at Nimbus Theatre in Minneapolis starting Friday and running through mid-December.

Femmes: A Tragedy is a lesbian-themed adaptation of Clare Boothe Luce’s The Woman (1936). The latter was made famous with an all-women cast and provided a sharp and witty commentary on wealthy socialites in New York in the 1930s. Young’s adaptation, the Hollywood Reporter noted, is a “loose yet surprisingly faithful lesbian transformation, it is the butches who are bantered about and battled over, but never seen.”

20% Theatre Company, which is in its 10th season, describes the show as a reimagining of Clare Booth Luce’s 1936 play The Women “against a backdrop of contemporary femme lesbian (sub)culture.” The story begins “when the curator of a burlesque show’s polyamorous girlfriend drops her overnight for a hot bartender, her friends – an activist, an academic and a party promoter – are thrown into girl/girl competition despite their best feminist intentions, and are ultimately forced to parse the ways butch/femme relationships do or don’t replicate heterosexual stereotypes.”

Casting includes: Marigold – Stephanie Messer, Callie – Jill Iverson, Riot – Morgen Chang, Guerra – Reyna Rios-Starr, Libby – Briana Patnode, Courtney – Briana Zora Libby, Dexy – Dana Lee Thompson, and Dutch – Amanda Hofman-Frethem

Show dates are:
Friday 12/4 at 7:30pm – Opening Night Party
Saturday 12/5 at 7:30pm
Sunday 12/6 at 2pm – Post-Show Discussion
Monday 12/7 at 7:30pm
Thursday 12/10 at 7:30pm
Friday 12/11 at 7:30pm – ASL-Interpreted & Post-Show Discussion
Saturday 12/12 at 7:30pm
Sunday 12/13 at 2pm

Tickets are $5 to $25 on sliding scale via www.tctwentypercent.org or 612-227-1188.