Walking Shadow Theatre Company’s “Feast” Is a Call to Action in 2026

Walking Shadow Theatre Company has brought Feast, a one-woman show inspired by Beowulf, back for its third run at the Black Forest Inn in Minneapolis. It is as much a retelling as it is a modern social commentary, a call to action, and an exploration of what it means to love and lose.

Walking Shadow Theatre Company

Beowulf is an Old English epic poem likely written between 975 and 1025 CE. It tells the story of the eponymous warrior, who kills a monster, Grendel, only to be targeted by Grendel’s mother, seeking to avenge her son’s death. The mother character is unnamed, known only as “Grendel’s mother,” or by epithets such as “Grundwyrgen” (“sea hag”). Beowulf slays Grendel’s mother, is lauded as a hero, and becomes a king.

In Feast, written by Megan Gogerty, we hear the perspective of the mother (who I will simply call “Mother” for the sake of simplicity and avoiding spoilers) as she comes to us in a human body she formed from clay. She is played in the Walking Shadow production by Isabel Nelson, who previously brought her to life in 2023 and 2024. Nelson brings intensity and strength but also vulnerability and humanity to the role, skillfully switching between reminiscence, anger, and grief at multiple points throughout the performance.

Mother embodies the role of the uptight hostess of a dinner party, which she has organized to make us humans feel comfortable and receptive to her story. But we don’t see her composed at first: She crawls onto the stage and painstakingly straightens her limbs before speaking any dialogue. She is not naturally organized, sociable, or calm. Mother is prone to raising her voice in moments of high emotion and talks openly about violence, politics, and sexuality. She is not a perfectly nurturing figure by any means. Mother brought a life into the world—Grendel’s—and she can take it away too. This begins the throughline of commentary on gender roles and what it “means” to be a mother.

John Heimbuch/Walking Shadow Theatre Company

Motherly wrath spurred on by motherly grief is the driving force of Mother’s actions as she describes them throughout the play. She raised Grendel in a cave under a lake but could not, or did not, stop him from leaving to visit the human town that had developed nearby. There, Grendel was only ever objectified for his strength and “monstrousness,” and naturally the locals only ever wanted to fight him. Over 12 years, Grendel killed thousands of challengers and was eventually bested by Beowulf, who Mother does not describe favorably. In particular, she stresses how he tore off her son’s arm and hung it up as a trophy to show off in his mead hall. As revenge not only for the killing of her son but also for the desecration of his body, Mother killed a teenage squire and dragged his body down to the shores of her lake, pointing the way for Beowulf to find and kill her.

“Do not make the mistake of thinking I have no heart,” Mother says. Feast makes the point that motherly love is not always “good” love: It can be violent, intemperate, and vengeful as much as it can be soft and safe. “Do not sleep on my wrath,” she says elsewhere.

John Heimbuch/Walking Shadow Theatre Company

Perhaps most importantly to us as viewers today, Feast is also a call to action. Mother emphasizes that the ways she and her son were wronged are not unique to them. Humans came into their homeland and built castles with no regard for the environment or the life that already existed there. This adds colonialism and environmentalism to the many themes Feast is dealing with. These are all relevant and deserve discussion, but the show can feel stretched thin at times with the number of issues it takes on.

Mother calls out the veneration of selfish individuals who wrong others, with a particular emphasis on modern-day “kings”: billionaires who hoard vast amounts of wealth without care for the quality of life of the rest of us. She addresses a few different philosophies to standing up to these people, including an “eat the rich” model, but comes to no solid conclusion because, to use her words, there often is no satisfaction, no closure, and no rest to be found after tragedies.

The Black Forest Inn, the venue for both this and previous runs of Feast, is around the corner from the location where Customs and Border Protection agents killed Alex Pretti on January 24. His memorial is visible from the restaurant. I imagine that state-sanctioned violence was on the minds of every person in the event space.

The Alex Pretti memorial site on Nicollet Avenue. Maddie Heath

After the show, I spoke to Isabel Nelson briefly about the prescience of the show. The venue had been booked for months before Pretti’s death and had, as mentioned, been the venue in 2023 and 2024. It was perhaps a tragic piece of verisimilitude that the very type of injustice Feast calls us to action to fight against—the force of a strongman coming down on the undeserving—should have occurred just across the street from the venue.

Feast, directed by Allison Vincent, runs Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays through March 28 at the Black Forest Inn. The show includes a full dinner curated by the restaurant for the show, with entrees preordered when you purchase your ticket, but performance-only tickets are available. Alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages, sides, and desserts are also available for purchase at the venue. Sycamore Gap and guitarist Scott Keever provide live music during dinner (alternating performances).

You can find more information and book tickets on the Walking Shadow website.