Red Eye Theater

05/28/2026

Yesterday, I got a little schooling from on how to make an Instagram graphic that has all the necessary information on it so that people can just easily share the graphic! Makes total sense of course right now, and we made some changes together!

Grateful to be still open to learning all the things and especially grateful for this week's artists! Please share this with all your friends and family! V

05/28/2026

🎉 WIP30! STARTS TODAY! RED EYE FESTIVAL WEEK 2! feat. DEJAJOELLE + KAT PURCELL!!
Do you have your tix? [Link in comments to snag a spot]

This week the festival introduces two artists whose processes of assemblage could not be more different from each other — and whose differences have made them a particular kind of pleasure to hold.

✨DejaJoelle — Spiritual Interlude
A choreographic theology. DejaJoelle works inside the Black technologies of Gospel Music, Dance, and Black Matriarchy — reclaim, surrender, conjure — as living compositional structures. The body, the site of revolution. Healing as cosmological insistence.

✨Kat Purcell — un//be//done
A propagation. Conceived by Purcell, devised and performed with Katie Burgess, 陳璐 / Lu, Sabrín Feels, Ashembaga (Ashe) Jaafaru, Khary Jackson, and LIPING VONG, in collaboration with The People’s Closet, costumed by Jennie with the Freckles // JML Fashion. The work operates in the register of unfinishedness — anarchic mutuality is the formal strategy, instability, the compositional logic, interdependence interdependence? interdepenDANCE!

Come join us! The work needs your lateral presence.

05/27/2026

🎉 RED EYE X SMITTEN KITTEN: WEEK 2 RAFFLE IS LIVE · MAY 28–30

Don't forget!!! — we are still working to raise funds for rent assistance, eviction support, lawyer fees, transportation, deportation reunification, and more!

As we move deeper into Gemini season, this week's prizes are giving art, clay, and live music energy:

🖼️ An original painting by Masanari Kawahara (aka MASA!) · $200 value

HAPPIEST OF BIRTHDAYS MASA!!! It was only 2 years ago that you were part of the festival. Did a little dip in the archive (see pics at the end!)

🏺 A 60-minute hands-on pottery session for two at Mudluk Pottery with Sayge Carroll — throw or handbuild a bowl or mug, clay included, one fired piece per person · $165 value

(Did you know is moving this weekend?! They have new digs! Follow them for more!)

🎵 2 tickets to a Cedar Cultural Center show of your choice · $50 value · community-rooted, globe-spanning music

A chance to win this one EVERY weekend!

Raffle proceeds benefit Smitten Kitten's mutual aid fund — working to meet their $20K+ in outstanding needs for our neighbors: immigrant families and community members affected by ICE enforcement (and this continues!)

Congratulations to Last Week's Winners: Non Edwards, Nate Ramos and Michelle!!

GET REDDY this weekend's performances:

DejaJoelle brings Spiritual Interlude — a work rooting in Black technologies of Gospel Music, Dance, and Black Matriarchy. A deep breath before ceremony. An intentional space for reclaim, surrender, and conjure. DejaJoelle holds this room for breath, body, and spirit.

Kat Purcell brings un//be//done, conceived by Purcell and propagated in collaboration with The People's Closet, devised and performed by Katie Burgess, 陳璐 / Lu, Sabrín Feels, Ashembaga (Ashe) Jaafaru, Khary Jackson, and LIPING VONG, with costumes by Jennie with the Freckles // JML Fashion.

LINK IN BIO! www.redeyetheater.org

05/26/2026

Val here. Working on the program notes for this weekend and I stopped at this — Kat Purcell and the players of un//be//done naming their lineages, because yes, we are part of many constellations.

“The players would like to name some specific beings and lineages they are bringing into the space for this work: sibs and sweet family, family (chosen and blood), a Fan Kick for Toni Pierce-Sands, air, neighbors, Edd, the last decade of resistance here in Minnesota, MonkeyBear's Harmolodic Workshop, Justice Resolution 001, Scalawag Magazine, the fragile geology of St. Anthony Falls.”

We gather, we vector in our histories. We arrive with everything that made us, broke us, held us, taught us, fed us. We name it out loud, imprinting the room — we call into the space who we are and who stands with us. Everything is everything.

What moves me about this list is what it holds together: blood family and chosen family. THE fan kick. Air. A (likely formative) magazine from North Carolina. Geological formation, ancient and fragile. The last decade of resistance in this state.

They are co-creators. They are present.
This is a propagation. These days where we don’t know what the record is, this is making a record.

Grateful to be holding space for Katie Burgess, 陳璐 / Lu, Sabrín Feels, Ashembaga (Ashe) Jaafaru, Khary Jackson, and LIPING VONG — and for Jennie with the Freckles / JML Fashion and The People's Closet, woven into the fabric of this thing.

Come this weekend.

05/23/2026

05/22/2026

We had such a BEAUTIFUL opening performance last night!!! Tickets are still available for performances this weekend and throughout the festival!

ALSO PSA!
🎟️ RED EYE MUTUAL AID RAFFLE — WEEK 1!

If you came through yesterday you would have gotten the jump on some of these raffle prizes :)

There is still time to win one or some of these incredible prizes while supporting people impacted by ICE occupation, eviction, and state violence. Funds go directly through Smitten Kitten's mutual aid @ fund — THERE IS $26K of immediate need.

THIS WEEK'S PRIZES:
✨ 2 Somatic Movement Therapy Sessions with Jinza Thayer ($300 value)
✨ 3 Private Pilates Sessions with Arwen Wilder, co-founder of HIJACK ($270 value)
✨ 2 Tickets to a Cedar Cultural Center show ($50 value)
🌟 One winner also gets a $25 Seward Co-op gift card!

$5 for 5 tickets / $10 for 15 tickets
Drawing this Saturday!

Venmo — or pay by Square or cash at the theater.

New prizes every week through June 13. 🔴

05/21/2026

TODAY is the day!
We open the newly shaped RED EYE WIP FESTIVAL with WIP 15! Four artists sharing 15 minute iterations of their works-in-process. Come to the festival this weekend, we would love to share this incredible work with you!
[Tickets linked in comments below]

Ahead of week one of Red Eye’s WIP Festival, festival producer Marcela Michelle shares a generative response to the state of the festival as she sees it today.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
During last night’s dress rehearsal it really set in, and I became flooded with gratitude. To get to help these artists in some small way to present their work with our communities is such an incredible gift. To get to perform alongside them, while also working as a producer, an even rarer gift.

The container, the site, the producer, the artist, must all be as available to process, progress, phase, periphery, plasticity as possible. As the work is. As we want the audience to be. As the audience wants to be. There is perhaps no greater example of this parallax approach than The Festival.

Perhaps -

As plastic as the problems.
As possible as the perfect.
As problematized as the protest.
As predictable as the prophecy.
As palatable as the poison.

My hope, my prayer, is that we continue to pursue possibility over plausibility. That we prioritize passion over prescription, that we pedestal play as much as purpose, that we dream as big as the problems are. I’m grateful to participate in these pursuits with such promising and powerful people.





brito

05/18/2026

WIP15 Artist Jarek Pastor reflects on their time inside the festival’s creative process. Read about it here, and don’t forget to get your tickets to the festival that opens this week!
⭐️Tickets linked in bio ⭐️

“A beautiful thing about process is how it holds everything. At the start of this journey, all I knew about what I’d be sharing was my method of approach, not one bit about its manifestation. But I knew what had been on my mind, and what the Twin Cities was collectively experiencing as I worked with collaborators toward this week. (Y’all seen this? Heard about this?) What I felt was abrasion, so I worked with that abrasion toward considering the fears and promise of self-serving comforts that tempt people to opt out of actively contributing their efforts to a healthier future. A challenging thing about process is how it holds so much. Practicalities of schedules and complications outside of the project made it wiser to shift gears. Thankfully, this shift has simply been to the other side of that consideration’s coin: how we look back on opportunities we had to opt into what our hearts called for. With this sharing, I hope we find space to consider the hauntings of “could have beens” within and beyond ourselves. Maybe more importantly, how we might try to transpose that haunting specter into the animating spirit of “can still be.” (Folks…)”

WIP15 Artist Jarek Pastor, Photo by Val Oliveiro

05/14/2026

This year, Red Eye is partnering with SMITTEN KITTEN’S MUTAL AID FUND for the full run of the festival.

Smitten Kitten’s fund is rapid-response, low-barrier, no-application cash assistance for people on the margins targeted by state violence and systemic oppression. Funds move person-to-person with no overhead.

As of this writing, there is a $26K backlog of urgent requests. People in our communities are still being impacted by ICE enforcement and economic precarity. The need is immediate.

As a small artist-run nonprofit navigating reduced arts funding and lower ticket revenue across the field, we wanted to build a partnership that could offer sustained material support while remaining financially sustainable for the artists and workers who make this festival possible.

Three ways to participate:
→ Give directly. Venmo
→ Pay a little more for your ticket. Tickets are sliding scale $18–$80. 10% of every ticket sold (after fees) goes directly to the fund. If you can pay a little more, your ticket helps extend that support further. If the festival surpasses its ticket sales goals, additional proceeds will also be contributed.
→ Enter the raffle. Each week of the festival we’re running a raffle — proceeds go directly to the fund.

“Smitten Kitten’s mutual aid fund is a lifeline for folks and is uniquely accessible — cash in gets distributed immediately, usually within hours.”
— JP, Smitten Kitten

Link in comments for tickets + more info.
May 21–June 13, 2026 // Red Eye Theater, Minneapolis

05/11/2026

✨SIGN UP TO VOLUNTEER + GET (2) FREE TICKETS TO THE FESTIVAL!!✨

Positions include hosting, box office and camera operators for documentation. Sign up for your slot today and attend the festival for free!
[sign up site linked in the comments below]

Red Eye Festival is an annual gathering for live performance works that respond to the current moment and imagine collective transformation. Over nearly four decades, this incubator of new work has become a cornerstone of the Twin Cities performance landscape.
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