Crooked Path Theatre bringing ‘We’ll Get Back to You’ to Scotland for Edinburgh Fringe

A play that made its world debut in Cedar Rapids is headed overseas to Scotland for the world’s largest arts festival: Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Crooked Path Theatre is kicking off the 25-day festival with “We’ll Get Back to You,” which premiered in 2024 at Mirrorbox Theatre.

“We’ll Get Back to You” opens in Edinburgh on Aug. 2 and runs through Aug. 9.

On the surface, the show is about an unusual job interview.

“Except when it isn’t,” Chris Okiishi, who plays Todd Klosser, told The Gazette, “and then it is a play about the world as we know it and how we treat each other within that world. And it also asks the question, ‘why don’t we spend our time doing the things that we love and are good at as opposed to the things we hate and are bad at?’”

While the show addresses serious, powerful topics, it’s also engaging and extremely funny.

“We’ve rarely ever heard audiences so fully engaged in laughter,” he said.

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Okiishi and Patrick Du Laney, both producers of the play, described Edinburgh Fringe as the Olympics of the theatrical arts — without the aspect of competition.

“Everything that can be put on a stage or performed in front of an audience, from French mime troupes to Hungarian circuses to Chinese political theater, all of it is there, and in every size and shape you can imagine, is our understanding,” Okiishi said. “We get to slot ourselves in as this 90-minute Midwestern piece of slightly subversive theater ... so we’re the middle section of the Decathalon.”

In 2024, the festival featured over 3,700 shows and over 2.6 million tickets were issued. It’s the third largest ticketed event in the world, surpassed only by the Olympics and World Cup.

But travel has a cost, and bringing the production overseas is not a small feat. The goal is to raise a total of $40,000. So far, the team has raised money from corporate giving and the show itself. They have been met with “incredible generosity” thus far, Okiishi said, especially from early donors that believed in the dream and funded necessary deposits.

Crooked Path Theatre is hopeful to raise the final $10,000 needed to fund travel and lodging in the next month, in part from a fundraising cabaret on July 26 at The James Theater in Iowa City.

Fittingly, the cabaret’s theme is travel and features over 15 performers, including Du Laney and Okiishi.

“There’s a silent auction of several local businesses that have donated some things to be auctioned off, including artwork and spa packages and things that are only available at our cabaret,” Okiishi said.

If You Go

What: Come Fly With Me: A Fundraiser Cabaret of Travels and Travails

When: Saturday, July 26 at 7:30 p.m.

Where: The James Theater, 213 N. Gilbert St., Iowa City

Tickets: $30, www.thejamesic.com

Crooked Path Theatre’s road to Edinburgh Fringe

After a successful run at Mirrorbox Theatre in 2024, conversations turned to taking the show to Chicago. But director Kristin Hanggi felt the show hadn’t made its full impact in Iowa, so they brought it to The James.

Then, while reflecting on the run of shows in Iowa City, Hanggi suggested taking the show to Edinburgh Fringe.

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The Fringe first-timers started the process just after Christmas last year, discovering they needed to first secure a venue for their show in order to be included in the festival.

“There are literally hundreds of venues,” Du Laney said. “The largest that we saw was basically a very traditional 2,000 seat proscenium theater. The smallest venue we saw was a phone booth because someone performed a show for one audience member.”

“As I understand it, if you are ADA accessible, if you have a working bathroom, you can be a venue,” he added. For curious minds, a designated bathroom for the phone booth venue was located nearby.

Crooked Path Theatre applied to and were accepted at a number of theaters, but ultimately found the right fit with the non-profit organization Paradise Green. “We’ll Get Back to You” will be performed in the sanctuary of Paradise in Augustines, which is a church outside of the festival period.

“This theater in Scotland has been incredibly thoughtful and generous and just taking us very gently by the hand and walking us through — because there’s quite a few steps both for getting the show there, but also things like visas, letters of invitation,” Du Laney said.

There are challenges with bringing a production overseas, like having to leave sets at home. The company is given only the space of two suitcases to store props and items needed at the venue.

“We will have gone from two really beautiful, intricate, ornate, tricky, fun sets to basically a table and six chairs,” Du Laney said.

Plus, they must adhere to a 90-minute time limit, with strict 15-minute bookends to set up and tear down before the next production takes over the stage.

“It would be interesting to bring it back (to Iowa) for a night and just say this is the table and chairs version,” Du Laney said.

“Every time we talk to groups of people about this play, people say, ‘well, when can we see it next in the Corridor?’ We wish that we could just keep bringing it back, and I don’t know if we’re in a position to say we’ll never do it again or that we are ready to announce another run,” Okiishi said.

Beyond bringing the show to new audiences, Okiishi said they are looking forward to surprising another production with a special guest.

“Our director (Hanggi) created and directed the original production of ‘Rock of Ages’ on Broadway, and in the same theater where we’ll be at, there’s a production of that happening later in the day from a local group,” Okiishi said. “I don’t think they know that she (will be) there. We can’t wait for that moment.”

Recommended Reading

REVIEW: ‘We’ll Get Back to You’ gets to heart of breaking emotional barriers

Evolution of “We’ll Get Back to You”

“Because of the nature of how theater works in Iowa, most actors in this area don’t get an opportunity to do a long run of a play and to (get) the experience of age and time ... These two productions have given these six actors a really interesting opportunity to go, ‘oh, I get that deeper now,’” Du Laney said.

While time has deepened the actors’ understandings of the piece, changing times have also brought new meanings to the play.

“When we hit Iowa City, people asked us, when did we add all the political humor? And we didn’t add any political humor,” Okiishi said.

The difference was a new political administration.

“Some of the lines hit very different in a post-Biden world,” Du Laney said.

As they prepare to take this piece of American theater overseas, they are examining cultural references with playwright Rob Bell. Bell will be unable to make it to the show’s run at the Fringe but will be supporting the cast virtually.

“A lot of the political humor has to do with workplace situations and how greed and corruption and lack of humanity within the way people make a living and spend their lives has warped people’s feelings towards each other,” Okiishi said. “We suspect that that’s pretty universal in the industrialized world.”

Du Laney acknowledged their responsibility to represent the United States.

“We’ve done some preemptive things about that. We partnered with RAYGUN to create show shirts that basically say yes, we’re American, but we’re not like that. Just because I do think there’s a world where we’re stopped in the street and said, ‘how could you do this?’ Or ‘what do you have to say for yourself?’” Du Laney said. “I think there’s a possibility for us, and I think we have to be ready for it and I think we have to ... respond to it in a way that says we understand, we know and we’re sorry.”

Crooked Path Theatre is not a political organization and they do not advocate for a particular political party. But all theater is political, Du Laney noted, even if the stance is to be apolitical.

“Going to Edinburgh with a play that says ‘wouldn’t it be great if we were all nicer to each other and brought out the best in each other?’ — that shouldn’t be a political act, and yet maybe it has become one,” Okiishi said. “But we are leaning into the message of our show which is: We see you. We think you’re awesome. You have something to offer the world, and so do we. And if that is political, that’s not our fault.”

Comments: bailey.cichon@thegazette.com

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