Signe V. Harriday, Senior Artistic Producing Director
Michael Hoyt, Creative Community Director
Masanari Kawahara, Naked Stages Director
Kurt Kwan, Breaking Ice Manager
Mankwe Ndosi, Resident Community Engaged Artist
Julia Snider Nickerson, Chicago Avenue Project Director
Noël Raymond, Senior Director of Arts & Culture
Rachael Rhoades, Production Manager
André Samples, PCC Workforce Training Director
Resident Teaching Artists:
Aimee K. Bryant, Bart Buch, Masanari Kawahara
Clay Man Soo
Associate Company Members
Jamila Anderson
Clare Brauch
Sharon Bridgforth
Laurie Smith Carlos (1949 – 2016)
John Catron
Christiana Clark
Paul de Cordova
Stephen DiMenna
Ellen Fenster
Brian Goranson
Signe V. Harriday
Daniel Alexander Jones
Jodi Kellogg
Blayn Lemke
Elizabeth MacNally
Marion McClinton (1954 – 2019)
Kimberly Joy Morgan
Sonja Parks
Heidi Batz Rogers
Michael Wangen (1954 – 2020)
James A. Williams
Payton J. Woodson
Pramila Vasudevan
Founder, Ralph Remington
Preceding Co-Artistic Director & Visionary, Faye M. Price
Late Night Founder, Laurie Smith Carlos (Ancestor)
Pillsbury House + Theatre’s mission is to co-create enduring change towards a just society through art. Pillsbury House + Theatre creates theatre productions, arts programs and projects aimed at increasing Access, Attachment and Agency among audiences, artists and community members.
NOVEMBER 14 - 23, 2024
Naked Stages Director .................................................... Masanari Kawahara
National Mentor ................................................................ Pramila Vasudevan
Various artists from The Theatrical Jazz Conference at UofMN
Lighting Workshop - KD Deutsch
Communications Workshop - Sara Abdelaal
Promotional Photos: Kitty Aal
Producing Directors
Signe V. Harriday & Noël Raymond
Directors
Dipankar Mukherjee, Cat Hammond, Aamera Siddiqui, Suzy Messerole, Leah Nelson
November 14, 16 and 22 at 7pm with Skye Reddy and Atim Opoka
November 15, 21, and 23 at 7pm with Sarah M. Greer and hal sansone
Naked Stages will return in 2025 with new artists. Applications for next year’s fellowship will be available at pillsburyhouseandtheatre.org in January 2025.
Naked Stages is made possible with major support from
@PHouseTheatre #NakedStages
About Naked Stages
A creative opportunity unlike any other in the Twin Cities, Naked Stages is a fellowship that provides early-career performance artists with the time, resources, and mentorship they need to bring their distinctive visions to life on stage. The artists participate in regular feedback sessions and workshops with local creators, as well as more intensive workshops with a nationally-renowned mentor artist. Naked Stages performances are the final step in a multi-layered program designed for artists to be their most bold and creative selves.
NAKED STAGES PROGRAM STAFF
MASANARI KAWAHARA- 川原正也- NAKED STAGES DIRECTOR
Masanari is a butō mover, theater artist, and educator who incorporates puppetry and mask into his works. He is a resident teaching artist at Pillsbury House + Theatre and has been Naked Stages Director since 2022. His latest butō work, doro doro (2024) with a soundscape by Sho Nikaido, was created as part of Isolated Acts at Red Eye Theater. His past butō works include Valerie Oliveiro’s SOFT FREEDOMS (2022) as part of MERGE at the Cowles Center; and the solo piece 8’46” (movement for healing) (2020), as part of Offerings: BareBones, which was recognized in StarTribune’s 2020 Artists of the Year edition. He was previously a member of the Butō group Nenkin Butoh Dan, which received a 2015 Sage Award for outstanding dance ensemble for Fu.Ku.Shi.Ma. Masanari was a Playwrights’ Center McKnight Theater Artist Fellow in 2018-2019 and 2010-2011.
PRAMILA VASUDEVAN - NATIONAL MENTOR
Pramila Vasudevan is a movement-centered artist, cultural worker, and maker of community-rooted/routed transdisciplinary work. Vasudevan is the founder and artistic director of Aniccha Arts (est. 2004), an experimental arts collaborative producing site-specific performances that examine agency, voice, and group dynamics within community histories, institutions, and systems. She is the recipient of a Joyce Award (2022) United States Artists Fellowship (2022), Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography (2017), a McKnight Foundation Fellowship in Choreography (2016) amongst other grants. She is of Tamil descent and has been living and working in the Twin Cities, on stolen Dakota land, for the past twenty-plus years. Her current practice involves gardening, hosting conversations and community gatherings, and developing improvisational movement sessions inspired by growing practices in gardens and greenhouses and by plant cycles. Her work engages with physical sites, ranging from human-constructed locations to natural environments. In this process, she learns about the site’s history, the embedded politics, and the materials that physically make it what it is. In responding artistically, Vasudevan orients from the body while layering in other media that illuminate a multiplicity of perspectives.
Naked Stages Fellows
Sarah M. Greer
Sarah M. Greer (www.sarahmgreer.com) is a singing, improvising, and performing artist who works at the intersection of song, sound and story. She has performed in numerous Twin Cities venues, at the Twin Cities and Madison, WI Jazz Festivals, and has invented music on regional and national stages. As a recording artist and composer, Sarah released their highly improvised debut album What the Music Says Do in 2018 and will release a live album of their improvised work Between: A Journey Through the Middle (2024).
HEAP CULL GATHER SOW
Directed by Dipankar Mukherjee
Words & Music by Sarah M. Greer
Heap Cull Gather Sow is a ceremonial journey through grieving, ancestral guidance, and heart memory carried by tears and talismans, movement and memory, stories and songs. Sourced from intuition and melody, Heap Cull Gather Sow asks how we hold loss and sorrow from the past and present and from where we garner the resources to re-imagine and re-member ourselves.
Note: With immeasurable thanks to – Dipankar Mukherjee: for believing in this project (and me). My ridiculously talented cohort – Atim, hal, and Skye: it’s been my privilege to share creative space/process with you. Masanari, Pramila, Mankwe, Rachael, Sara, Claudia, Heidi, Katie & Pillsbury House + Theatre: thank you for Naked Stages & your caring assistance to my discovery & performance of this work. My community of artist friends: I’m continuously grateful for your enthusiasm, advice, & support. My loving family & relations, those who came before & those who will follow – I carried each of you on this journey and (as always) you carried me.
Naked Stages Fellows
hal sansone
hal sansone (he/him) is a theatre artist, writer, and herbalist-gardener. He has been a company member with Sandbox Theatre since 2019. Most recently with Sandbox, he organized and directed the Minneapolis premiere of the Trans Voices Cabaret, which will occur again this December. Other works with Sandbox include Light My Way, Bone Mother, The Golden Record Project, and Words.Do.Move. He has also worked with various theatre companies in the Twin Cities as an actor, deviser, and teaching artist. As a poet, his micro-chapbook Winter Garlic: Healing Poems for my Root System was published by Ethel in 2023. hal holds a BA in Performance Creation from the University of Minnesota and a certificate in Herbal Studies from Minneapolis Community and Technical College.
Trans Man Gay Club Disco Fantasy
Directed by Cat Hammond
A gay trans man looks for belonging in queer nightlife. He does and doesn’t find it. So, he flirts into the silence and listens for desire. An impossible trans ancestor answers across space and time. Interweaving disco, go-go dancing, and drag, this show asks: what do you do when loneliness and community live side by side? How can pain become a portal to pleasure and possibility? Part autobiography, part fantasy, 100% gay.
Note: Thank you to Cat for all your brilliance, spot-on guidance, and gentlefierce spirit. Thank you to Sarah, Atim, Skye, Masa, and Pramila for all your keen observations, inspiration, and support. Thank you to all the folks at Pillsbury House - this is such a lovely community to be a part of and create in. Thank you to Steve at In the Heart of the Beast for the disco ball - essential! Thank you to Janis for sharing your experiences of Minneapolis in the 70s and funky dance moves. Thank you to Talvin Wilks for first teaching me about solo performance. Thank you to my chosen family who encourage me to keep making art even when I want to quit (I love y’all). Thank you to the queer clubs that raised me as a baby gay. Thank you to the ancestors who made me possible - I’m continually humbled by your resilience and defiant beauty.
Naked Stages Fellows
Skye Reddy
Skye Reddy is a multidisciplinary South Asian artist working in film and live performance. Their screendance works have been shown at festivals in India and the U.S., and featured in the LA Times. In different capacities, they have previously worked with The Southern Theater, Black Ensemble Productions, Red Eye Theater, Children’s Theatre Company, Asian Media Access, Theater Mu, LimeArts, and on various Twin Cities-based short films. Skye is currently a member of the Saint Paul Neighborhood Network (SPNN) Spotlight Shorts documentary cohort, and was the 2022-23 Production Management Fellow at Children’s Theatre Company. They hold a degree in Theater and Dance from Macalester College.
The Field of Three Horizons
Co-Directed by Suzy Messerole and Aamera Siddiqui Voiceover by Kalala Kiwanuka-Woernle and Jennings Mergenthal Combining movement, voice, and digital media, The Field of Three Horizons is based on Bengali cultural beliefs about ghosts. In a community without strong written traditions for common people, bamboo ghosts, fish-obsessed ghosts, and spirits that possess grapefruits have a beautiful specificity. They reveal much about the histories of Bengali people through their lives, livelihoods, fears, and unfulfilled desires. Told through fictionalized vignettes of real family stories, the performance plays upon ghost stories to explore themes of queerness, family relationships, language, and loss in a contemporary diaspora experience.
Note: I have so many people to thank, for so many things. Suzy and Aamera, for agreeing to take this on somehow between the two of you, and your enthusiasm for the various unconnected ideas that became this performance. Masa, for your support within the span of this fellowship and well before it. Atim, hal, and Sarah, for all the vulnerability and grace that made seven months feel so short. Jennings, for putting up with my endless “can you read this again,” and “does this make sense?” My family, for our language, our ghosts, and our stories. Thank you to each of the South Asian artists who expressed that you found connection in this piece, and affirmed that I didn’t need to explain or translate anything. And for all the people who have shown me love in the face of my own doubt: thank you.
Naked Stages Fellows
Atim Opoka
Atim Opoka (They/She) is a Ugandan-American (Acholi) songwriter, vocalist, composer, producer, and teaching artist, who fuses Afro-pop and alternative beats while embracing the power of transformative storytelling. Atim believes in the power of storytelling. Part of their current practice is decolonizing what is “Good Art” and challenging the power structures that decide what and whose stories get told. Life is art, and it is all around us. If we listen to nature, the stories will unfold. The power of imagination, and being able to dream. To let your mind wander, and your heart feel. That is how they create their art. Through songs, scenes, music, or with bodies. Allowing yourself to be open to all emotions, and all stories. They are a 2023-24 Monkeybear Puppetry Cohort Artist, 2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, TRCSTR 2023 Artist, a 2021 recipient of a Waters Award, as well as an Our Space is Spoken For Fellowship from the Twin Cities Media Alliance. She has had a residency at three-thirty one space with Rosy Simas Danse. She’s inspired to share authentic stories and amplify marginalized people taking their power back by telling their stories. She believes that art is a birthright.
This body is a gift: Messages from the Ancestors
Directed by Leah Nelson
Projections by Miko Simmons
An ancestral journey of remembrance.
Note: Special thanks to Leah Nelson for your guidance and friendship. Thank you to BrownBody, Rosy Simas Dance, DejaJoelle, Mirè Regulus, Namir Fearce, Naked Stages Fellows, Pillsbury staff, and my partner for all your support.
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Pillsbury House + Theatre acknowledge that we are on unceded Dakota territory. The Dakota and Ojibwe people continue to live on this land, including the sovereign nations of the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe, Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Grand Portage Chippewa, Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, Red Lake Nation, White Earth Nation, Lower Sioux Indian Community, Prairie Island Indian Community, Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, and Upper Sioux Community. These Indigenous people and more continue to live on this land despite the genocidal efforts and forced removal by the State of Minnesota and the United States Government. The approximately $3 million promised in the 1851 Treaty of Traverse des Sioux, ceding Dakota land in southern and western Minnesota to the United States Government, has yet to be paid. The land we are on was, is, and will always be Indigenous land.
The Settlement House movement which gave rise to Pillsbury House + Theatre has a history of erasure with respect to Native communities. In alignment with our mission to create challenging art that inspires enduring change towards a just society, Pillsbury House + Theatre commits to continue including Indigenous voices, whether they be Dakota, Ojibwe, or any of the 30+ Indigenous Nations represented in the Twin Cities area and across the globe. We commit to working in partnership with, and providing resources and stage time for Indigenous theatre makers and artists. We strive to support Indigenous voices at every opportunity and we ask you to commit to supporting the Indigenous people wherever you are.
@PHouseTheatre facebook.com/ PhouseTheatre
The Ruth Easton Fund
Actress Ruth Easton (née Edelstein) was born in North Branch, Minnesota and graduated from North Branch High School. She attended the University of Minnesota for one year and the following year attended Macalester College before finishing her collegiate career at Cumnock School in Los Angeles. She went on to New York where she studied acting with Oliver Morosco. Mr. Morosco opened a stock theater company in upstate New York where Ms. Easton starred in several plays. After performing with other stock theater companies she returned to New York City where she appeared in five Broadway plays over a period of seven years. They included Exceedingly Small, Privilege Car, Town Bay, Buckaroo and Charlie Chan. Exceedingly Small was directed by Ethel Barrymore and Easton played opposite Eric Dressler. New York critics praised her performance as “thoroughly touching” and “highly spirited and excellent.” She starred in radio dramas on the Rudy Vallee Hour and the Fleischmann’s Yeast Hour opposite such actors as Walter Huston, Judith Anderson and Lionel Barrymore. She also appeared with Clark Gable, Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson during the course of her career.
Ms. Easton’s legacy, her commitment to theater and the development of new works continues through the charitable gifts distributed through the Ruth Easton Fund of the Edelstein Family Foundation.
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
Pillsbury House + Theatre is supported in part by:
PILLSBURY HOUSE + THEATRE ADVISORY BOARD
Norah Shapiro, Chair
Cordelia Anderson
Pamela Arnold
John Humleker
Jim Langemo
Timothy Matteisen
Marianne E. Merriman
Sarah Milligan-Toffler
Adair Mosley
Eric Mueller
Vanan Murugesan
Cinnamon Pelly
Faye M. Price
Julie B. Sand
Tsega Tamene
Nedy Windham
PILLSBURY UNITED COMMUNITIES BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Heath Rudduck, Chair
Kaori Yamada, Vice Chair
Lindsay Benjamin, Secretary
Aaron Thomas, Treasurer
Melinda Emerson
Taylor Harwood
Mahrous Kandil
Ali Lozoff
Kenji Okumura
Jay Sivasailam
Anupama Sreekanth
Edrin Williams pillsburyhouseandtheatre.org
RETURNING TO PILLSBURY HOUSE: Meet the 2025 Makers Series
LOVE RISING DRAG STORY HOUR
The Drag Story Hour (@dragstoryhourmn) is on a mission to celebrate diverse and healthy gender expression for kids and their caring adults through the arts. See what hatches when Doña Pepa, Sid Sity, and Old Man Zimmer bring three new stories to our stage in Love Rising — a blend of puppets, lip syncs, songs, and dance to entertain and empower young audiences.
Love Rising, Ep. 1 - February 22
Love Rising, Ep. 2 - April 26
Love Rising, Ep. 3 - May 31
2015
DANEZ SMITH
Poet and writer Danez Smith brings their new play 2015 to PH + T — a time-traveling, truth-troubling negotiation between grandmother and grandchild.
BLACK AUGUST QUEER FILM FEST
Closing out the month of Black resistance, PH + T will showcase screenings, discussions, performances, and workshops that explore film as a space to archive, dream, liberate, and testify. Curated by Danez Smith.
SEQUOIA HAUCK
Sequoia Hauck (they/them) is a two-spirit, queer, Anishinaabe and Hupa filmmaker, interdisciplinary artist and director who creates work that indigenizes the process of art-making. Their work weaves Indigenous epistemologies, indigiqueer identity and the possibilities of Indigenous futurism. Sequoia is a 2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow and First Peoples Fund Cultural Capital Fellow as well as an Aniccha Arts Artistic Associate. sequoiahauck.com
