Ricardo Beaird

HOW FUN

Devising team: Ricardo Beaird, Megan Burns, Daisuke Kawachi, and Connor Lane

Additional direction by Victor Kirksey-Brown

Performed by Ricardo Beaird, Briana Patnode, Pedro Juan Fonseca, and Alex Xiong/Oblivia Nukem Jun

When’s the last time you had fun? Gabriel can’t remember. Set adrift after loss, Gabriel seeks out an online therapist to help him remember what it feels like to have fun. Using unusual methods ranging from telepathy to balancing LaCroix cans, the two hunt for the elusive nature of fun like their worlds depend on it. Neurosurgery by way of TikTok, How Fun asks what it costs to have a good time.

Ricardo Beaird (any pronoun) is a Twin Cities-based theater maker originally from Nashville, Tennessee. Their work is informed by the pursuit of healing through storytelling, the unfinished business of ghosts, dis/connection through the internet, and Beyoncé. In addition to performing with Pangea World Theater, Park Square Theatre, Red Eye Theater, and Ten Thousand Things Theater, Beaird was an advisory council member with the queer-led theater collective Lightning Rod and an artist council member for the 2021 and 2022 Northern Spark Arts Festival. As a playwright and director, their work includes DOOMSCROLL with MK and Tia!, a play that follows two podcasts hosts as they fall down a rabbit hole of conspiracies involving 5G paranoia, presented at the Guthrie Theatre’s Blackness Is Festival; SPOOK, a devised ritual exploring the gifts and curses of Black ancestry created in partnership with Suzanne Cross and Umbrella Collective; and COUNTDOWN!, a dance party at the end of the world, created with Megan Burns through the Red Eye Theater’s New Works 4 Weeks Festival. Currently, Ricardo is the Community Development Director at Springboard for the Arts, whose mission is to support artists with the tools to make a living and a life and to steward just, equitable communities.