SDSU-Born Turnkey Theatre Brings Their Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Show to Aztec Nights

One night only, free performance on Thursday, Sept. 30, 8 p.m.

by Lizbeth Persons Price

September 21, 2021

Turnkey Theatre, led by School of Theatre, Television, and Film Lecturer Dr. Katie Turner, presents an SDSU performance of their new show Iris & the Axe as part of the OneSDSU Aztec Nights Series. The performance on Sept. 30, 2021, at 8 p.m. in the Conrad Prebys Aztec Student Union Courtyard is free for students, staff, and faculty.

Iris, a Civil War widow who also recently lost her sister and parents in a cholera outbreak, is a young woman with an uncertain future. She is thrilled to have recently married Charles Cypress, a charming, handsome, and wealthy young man. The story begins when Iris arrives at Charles’ estate north of San Francisco. What should be a fairy-tale life living in his Victorian mansion and enjoying the estate’s lush grounds quickly turns sinister as Iris realizes all is not as it seems.

Audiences make choices throughout the play that determine Iris’s fate. Choices are guided by the symbolism of the Victorian language of flowers.

Audience members are encouraged to arrive early as the first 50 attendees will receive a free gift. Tickets to later online viewings of Iris & the Axe are also available at www.turnkeytheatre.com/iris. Use code SAVE10 to save $10.

Iris & the Axe is presented through OneSDSU, whose mission is to provide the SDSU community with events that highlight the intersectional identities across our campus. This show subverts traditional melodrama with a feminist lens. Where usually this genre spotlights passive damsels who wait for the hero to save them, in this story, the women save the day.

Written, acted, designed, and produced by a nearly all-female and majority BIPOC team, this show seeks to increase diversity in theatre. Like all Turnkey Theatre productions, it directly involves YOU, the viewer—this story literally can’t happen without its audience.

About Turnkey Theatre
Turnkey Theatre, born during the pandemic, was founded by SDSU students and faculty. The company specializes in new, interactive plays, both online and in-person. An essential element of each piece is that it involves audience participation to engage and enliven audiences through art. Turnkey is a women-led company dedicated to increasing diversity in American theatre and is dedicated to producing new plays by new and emerging playwrights. www.turnkeytheatre.com @turnkeytheatre.

The content within this article has been edited by Lizbeth Persons.

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