Our History
Photo by Bruce Silcox
Rooted in South Minneapolis for more than a century.
More than 140 years ago, there was a Settlement House called Pillsbury House, which by the 1920s had merged into Pillsbury United Communities, a network of community centers across Minneapolis. Inside Pillsbury House was a 96-seat theatre, which the enterprising artist Ralph Remington built into a full professional theatre in the early 90s.
The theatre and community center operated separately but side by side for years. Then, under the leadership of Co-Directors Faye M. Price and Noel Raymond in 2009, these entities merged to become the professional arts/human service hybrid known as Pillsbury House+Theatre. PH+T has been integrating arts into all our human service programming and into the neighborhood fabric ever since.
Signe Harriday, a new but long-connected leader, joined as Artistic Producing Director in 2021. Under Harriday and Raymond’s co-direction, PH+T is rising to meet new artist and community needs as Pillsbury Creative Commons, an arts and economic development hub for South Minneapolis.
The Neighborhood We Serve
Pillsbury House + Theatre lives at the intersection of Chicago Avenue and 35th Street in one of Minneapolis’s most diverse areas, a crossroads of Indigenous peoples and generations of immigrants who’ve made the city their home. This community is our lifeblood. Each year, tens of thousands of neighbors engage with our human services and arts programming — from young children in our daycare to audience members to unhoused youth in our bike shop to the vibrant community of artists we employ.
In May 2020, George Floyd was murdered by police three blocks from our doors. This event further destabilized a neighborhood already devastated by overlapping pandemics of racial injustice and COVID-19. Floyd’s murder also sparked a creative and political uprising that echoed around the world — most profoundly in our neighborhood. Since 2020, PH+T has helped house and supply local nonprofits that grew from the uprising, including Rise & Remember.
Today, we continue to be an anchor for creative and economic well-being, rising to the changing needs of a neighborhood forever reinventing itself.
Indigenous Land Acknowledgement
Pillsbury House + Theatre would like to 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, we commit 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.