Staff photo by Connor Cummiskey Student-actors pose onstage in costume for “Bad Auditions by Bad Actors” at The Grand Kabaret. Pictured left to right: Hannah Larson (casting director), Dan Lindquist (Roger), Abigail Allen (Catherine), Katlyn Sarkar (Maria), Evon Sprenger (Joe Romano) Wyatt Zuhlsdorf (Charles Feingold), Caitlyn Drill (Edmund), Kayla Rose Adema (agent) and Nick Schultz (Martin).

NEW ULM — Enjoy a bit of Schadenfreude this weekend with student-actors at The Grand Kabaret.

The When Things Go Wrong Night of One-Acts presents three one-act plays about unfortunate experiences. Shows begin at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday night, July 21 and 22, and at 3 p.m. Sunday, July 23, tickets are $7 and $5 for members, students and seniors.

Food will be served Friday until 7:30 p.m., drinks will be served through the show. Saturday will also have drink service through the evening.

The first show is “Bad Auditions by Bad Actors,” written by Ian McWerthy.

“It is hilariously funny,” Director Seraphim Surprenant said. “It is about a casting director who only has one day to find Romeo and Juliet and the actors are not the best.”

The exasperated casting director has to deal with auditions including: a Shakespearean method-actor, an acting coach who will not leave their student and a cat.

The next show presented will be “Check Please” by Jonathan Rand, where a man and a woman each face down the challenges of the dating world.

“It is about a series of bad first dates, and I do mean bad,” Director Sheldon Rieke said. “It could send you into a monastery if it kept up long enough I think.”

Potential suitors range from a kleptomaniac, a woman with everything set for the wedding and a man who thinks burlap is a fashion statement.

The third show is “Live Onstage” by Pat Cook. It starts with a professor lecturing on theater only to discover their stage crew does not exist.

Healthy Communities/ Healthy Youth has held a summer one-act program for the last seven or eight years, Rieke said.

For most of that time it has traveled between different spaces with a more off-off-Broadway atmosphere.

“It is fun to do it in a unique space rather than on big proscenium stages that we have around town,” Rieke said.

A proscenium stage has the audience on one side facing the raised stage through a proscenium arch, making the action onstage appear as if through a window.

A smaller space allows the actors to perform more naturally. They do not have to focus on angling their body to the crowd or over emphasizing actions, Rieke said.

The other tradition the show has held onto through most its years is usually one student who has participated in the past comes back to direct one of the shows, like Surprenant.

She is studying theater and the University of Minnesota, Morris. The major requires students to involve themselves in a production outside of campus.

“I am getting college credit for it but it has been so much more fun than any college class I have taken so far,” Surprenant said.

So spend a night out laughing at someone else’s misfortune with The When Things Go Wrong Night of One-Acts.

ccummiskey@nujournal.com