2013 NAKED STAGES
December 4 - 7, 2013, at 7:30 p.m. December 11- 14, 2013, at 7:30 p.m. All tickets are Pick Your Price. Pay whatever price you want, anytime. Buy tickets »2013 Naked Stages Artist Applications
Artist Applications for the 2013 Naked Stages Program are now available.
Informational Meetings for prospective applicants:
Monday, February 18th at 6:30 p.m.
Pillsbury House Theatre (Map and Directions)
Sunday, February 24th at noon
The Center for Hmong Arts and Talent, 995 University Ave W, Suite 220, Saint Paul
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Download the Application (PDF) »
Deadline for Submissions:
Applications must be received by 5:00p.m. March 15, 2013.
Mail or deliver complete application to:
Pillsbury House Theatre, Attn: Naked Stages
3501 Chicago Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55407
About the Naked Stages Program
The goal of this program is to assist artists in acquiring tools to further their performance careers, including workshop opportunities in performance, critical response skills, marketing, and technical production. This program emphasizes the development of artistic process rather than technical production. To this end, artists are not permitted to supplement their technical budget with additional grant funds. Artists are expected to be in residence in the Twin Cities for the mentorship program and production period. This is a time intensive program and artists should consider their ability to commit to the program prior to the application process.
The selected artists meet as a group to participate in workshops and provide a critical and supportive environment for creating work. All parts of this process will be coordinated and facilitated by the Program Artistic Director. Artists receive support for marketing, technical production, and photo and video documentation from the Pillsbury House Theatre staff, as well as program funding for a director and additional artistic personnel. Two artists will share a two-weekend run at Pillsbury House Theatre December 5th – 7th and Dec. 12th – 14th, 2012, and one installation-based artist will set their own schedule depending on their concept.
Changes to the Naked Stages program for 2013
Please note the following changes to the Naked Stages program for 2013 based on feedback from past recipients:
- There will only be three Naked Stages projects selected this year. This allows us to increase the honorarium for artists and their directors.
- Two artists/groups will perform their work on stage over two weekends in December. We are seeking a third artist/group who will apply with a performance-based installation of their own design that will be presented in or around the building in a time-frame that the artist chooses.
- Nationally renowned playwright, touring artist, and teacher Sharon Bridgforth will take on a larger role as mentor throughout the fellowship period alongside Program Director Molly Van Avery. Laurie Carlos is stepping aside from her as Artistic Director of the program. Laurie transitioned Naked Stages from Intermedia Arts to Pillsbury House + Theatre. She infused Naked Stages with her wisdom, her experience, and her faith in artists fearlessly and ferociously for the past several years. She will be missed, though her impact on the program will remain strong.
Application to Naked Stages
Artist proposals will be sought through an open call and through nominations by Twin Cities’ presenters. All applicants, even those nominated, must submit an application and go through the evaluation process. The Program Artistic Director along with a panel of experienced artists and presenters will review proposals. Three artists will be selected to present their work at Pillsbury House Theatre in December, 2013. Selections will be announced and the program will begin in April 2013. Download the Application (PDF) »
2012 NAKED STAGES ARTISTS
Ahanti Young
Ahanti Young brings our culture’s invisible people to life using comedy, music, dance, and poetry—to reveal the specific humanity underneath the stereotypes. What is the face that you hide your true self behind? Read More»
David T Steinman
In the world of an airline baggage handler, TSA patdowns, labor rights disputes, terror alert levels, and jet fuel surround the lowly laborer. Bagman combines live music, masked characters, storytelling, and projected images to reveal the chaos of a life where days flow between brutal acts and dreamlike flight. Read More»
Jeffry Lusiak
Performance artist Jeffry Lusiak weaves questions of assimilation within queer identity into a visually-arresting, dynamic collage of live performance and layered video projection to create a bold and unsettling world of high heels, pop culture, violence, desire, shame, and love. Read More»
Zoe Sommers Haas
Welcome to Devon’s world. Love him or hate him, once you’ve seen him lose himself in this fantasy world of dreams, joys, failures, and self-discovery—full of movement, video, lighting effects, and pop songs—you’ll understand that he’s just looking for love like everyone else. Can he make himself worthy? Read More»WHAT IS 
?
Pillsbury House Theatre, with support from the Jerome Foundation, seeks to provide a mentorship opportunity for emerging performance artists in Minnesota.
Three emerging artists, funded by the Jerome Foundation, use multiple media, puppetry, storytelling, satire, and movement to present their work to the public.
A creative opportunity unlike any other in Minnesota, Naked Stages is the culmination of a 7 month training fellowship that provides four emerging performance artists with the time, resources, and mentorship they need to bring their distinctive visions to life on stage. In addition to regular feedback sessions, the artists participate in workshops with local creators like Hijack and Pramila Vasudevan, as well as more intensive workshops with nationally-renowned artist Sharon Bridgforth. Once a month, they also participate in production meetings focused on the business side of art, from audience development to technical support, helping to develop their unique voice into a sustainable, artistic career.
Naked Stages performances are the final step of a multi-layered program designed to empower artists to be their most bold and creative and to challenge artists and audiences alike to push past their previous boundaries.
What is Performance Art?
Below is a summary adapted from the essay "Fluid Landscapes," by Lois Keidan and Daniel Brine.
“Performance Art is not a singular form of art, but an umbrella term for work that pushes the boundaries of diverse disciplines. Disrupting borders, breaking rules, defying traditions, resisting definition, asking questions and activating audiences, Performance Art is a research engine where the limits of art and ideas are tested and new possibilities imagined.”
2012 NAKED STAGES ARTISTS
Ahanti Young
Ahanti Young brings our culture’s invisible people to life using comedy, music, dance, and poetry—to reveal the specific humanity underneath the stereotypes. What is the face that you hide your true self behind? Read More»David T Steinman
In the world of an airline baggage handler, TSA patdowns, labor rights disputes, terror alert levels, and jet fuel surround the lowly laborer. Bagman combines live music, masked characters, storytelling, and projected images to reveal the chaos of a life where days flow between brutal acts and dreamlike flight. Read More»Jeffry Lusiak
Performance artist Jeffry Lusiak weaves questions of assimilation within queer identity into a visually-arresting, dynamic collage of live performance and layered video projection to create a bold and unsettling world of high heels, pop culture, violence, desire, shame, and love. Read More»Zoe Sommers Haas
Welcome to Devon’s world. Love him or hate him, once you’ve seen him lose himself in this fantasy world of dreams, joys, failures, and self-discovery—full of movement, video, lighting effects, and pop songs—you’ll understand that he’s just looking for love like everyone else. Can he make himself worthy? Read More»2011 NAKED STAGES ARTISTS
Ephraim Eusebio
A CIA operative, pilot of an unmanned aerial vehicle, a drone, bombs targets in South Asia while struggling to be a good father and a husband. Video, mime, shadow puppetry, dance, and acrobatics combine in a pageant of stunning images set to original pop music fashioned after today’s top-40 hits. Read More»
Max Wirsing
We All Died and Came Back Easier is a mashup of gay cultural history through installation, image and movement, swallowed, digested, and spit back up by a post-Stonewall homo. Performed by Max Wirsing, Dustin Maxwell and Nick LeMere. Read More»
Moe Lionel
What do you do with facts that haunt you? How does the body reconcile trauma and hope? Moe Lionel travels from the depths of a swimming pool in L.A. to a bathtub full of ice in Minneapolis, mapping genealogies of violence, masculinity, and whiteness held in his body. Read More»
Paulino Brener
A tall Argentine leaves his mother land to come to the U.S. and discovers that changing the language you speak might change who you are. Don’t Cry For Me uses satire, movement, and storytelling to explore connections between language and identity. Performed by Paulino Brener. Directed by Dario Tangelson. Read More»2010 NAKED STAGES ARTISTS
Andrea Jenkins
This African-American transgender woman lives life balanced on a tightrope. A truly multi-media experience, "Body Parts" uses video and visual art, movement and music and monologue to express and explore the dual nature of the human body. Read More»
Esther Ouray
A “rite of return” about the right of return. "The Hebrew Lesson" is performed with live music and weaves myth, history, and personal narrative into the story of a thwarted journey to deliver an ancestor’s ashes to a homeland perverted by conflict. Read More»
Janaki Ranpura
In the midst of a medical demonstration, the patient’s heart jumps up and runs across the room. "Your Heart is in My Mouth" takes a daughter on a carnival ride with puppets and shadow projections through her father's life and deeper into their relationship. Read More»
M. Cochise Anderson
Climb aboard the USS Illusion as it cuts across the Trail of Tears. "Methods of Mass Deception" reimagines historical tragedies through the surreal lenses of modern media, using spoken word, movement, and satire to sail to the center of America’s affliction of entitlement. Read More»2009 NAKED STAGES ARTISTS
Julia Elizabeth Babb
A braided journey through inner realms, “outré dimensions”, and points betwixt the two, with a certain fluid integrity being its ultimate destination. Read More»
Julian McFaul
A short collection of lectures on gravity, relativity and escaping the depths of your own bullshit, using cardboard models of unquantifiable reality. Read More»
Kelley A Meister
Kelley’s journey for self-approval invites the audience to explore their shared vulnerabilities by encouraging full audience participation. Read More»
Miré Regulus
what do I get from my father? what am I offering my son? where do I place sex on the continuum? and how do I not bind myself in a facade of goodness in the meantime? Read More»
