Art Hounds: Three theater pieces

This week on Art Hounds: "Death of a Salesman," "Our Town" and "Queen."

Sean Byrd, an actor, director and professor, recommends venturing to a strip mall in Osseo to check out Yellow Tree Theatre's production of the Arthur Miller classic, "Death of a Salesman." Byrd says this small theater company has earned a reputation for staging powerful work, and this latest production is no exception. Byrd says "Death of a Salesman" takes place in the 1940s, and while door-to-door sales work is nowadays quite rare, the play's universal themes still resonate with a contemporary audience. On stage through Oct. 16.

Art enthusiast Debra Newman has a great evening planned out for you. She is a fan of DalekoArts, a company in New Prague that puts on shows in an old Czechoslovakian dance hall. DalekoArts is currently presenting "Our Town," and Newman points out that you should make the drive to New Prague (enjoying the fall colors on the way), pick up your playbill for the show a little early, and then use the coupon inside for a free drink at the wine bar across the street. Steep yourself in the small-town charm of New Prague and then settle in for a show all about the beauty of small town life.

Laney Ohmans is excited to see "Queen," a new production at In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre in Minneapolis. The show springs from a poem local artist Junauda Petrus wrote after the killing of Michael Brown; she imagined a world in which the police force was taken over by grandmothers. Ohmans says she's looking forward to seeing how puppets bring this imaginative, heartfelt story to life. "Queen" runs through Oct. 2.