Rebel Alliance Theatre invites you to come and help them tell a Tale as Old as Time in a new way. Set aside your torches and pitchforks, keep a level head, and remind yourself, we are all people with different "once upon a times" and "happily-ever-afters". Not everyone's story needs to be the same as yours. 

On the surface, Beauty and the Beast may seem a fairly simple narrative, one that any child can understand. But, look beneath and things may not be so familiar, comfortable, and predictable. The 2023 Rebel Alliance Theatre Season is devoted to exploring the experience of LGBTQ+ people. With this in mind, the Rebel crew has taken the deceptively familiar beats of the old fairy tale and worked to see what lies beneath. As Keegan Burnett-Connelly (this season’s program director) states, “Our production isn’t your grandmother’s Beauty and the Beast”. The play begins with a Storyteller telling one of the characters, “You aren’t in this story.” How many LGBTQ+ people feel this everyday? How many marginalized groups of people (Queer, Neuro-divergent, members of racial minorities) feel that the story “everyone knows' ' doesn't include them?The majority of the cast of this production identify as LGBTQ+ and have crafted a performance designed to encourage the audience to think about how this timeless classic changes when "Beauty" is not what you expected. Questions of identity and who you think you are, how others perceive you, toxic masculinity, autonomy, as well as generosity, empathy, and accepting those that are different are all core elements of Rebel’s production of Beauty and The Beast.

What is the story we are telling with this play? That is the question the theatre artists at Rebel Alliance Theatre ask themselves constantly as they work to bring the words on the pages of a script to life. Because they never truly understand the story they are trying to tell until they begin to tell it. It is the process of rehearsing, designing, planning and sharing thoughts and ideas about a play that give a story (their story) its meaning. And so it has been with their current production, Beauty and the Beast by Marty Duhatschek. But, you may say, Beauty and the Beast – everybody knows THAT story. It’s been around forever! So it has – but Rebel Alliance Theatre challenges the idea that we “know what the story is about” with their current production of the oft-told tale.

This show contains themes that may not be comfortable for all audiences – parental guidance is encouraged. 

Tickets are $18 to $25 Purchase tickets at the door or at ko-fi.com/rebelalliancetheatre (The Binary is a Curse). The Rebel Alliance Theater 2023 season was underwritten by a generous grant from the First Congregational Church in Oshkosh.