Naked Stages Performances 2026
PILLSBURY HOUSE + THEATRE ANNOUNCES 2026 NAKED STAGES PERFORMANCE DATES
November 12–14 and 19–21 at 7 p.m.
About the Naked Stages Program
Pillsbury House + Theatre (PH+T), with support from the Jerome Foundation, provides a fellowship opportunity for early career performance artists in Minnesota. This program gives artists a supportive environment to build their performance and production skills while creating a stage or site-specific performance piece with PH+T as the venue. Naked Stages emphasizes the development of artistic process rather than technical production.
Masanari Kawahara — Naked Stages Program Director
Masanari is a performer, educator, and Butoh practitioner who incorporates puppetry, mask, and movement into his work. He stepped into the role of Naked Stages Program Director in January 2022 and is currently a resident teaching artist at Pillsbury House + Theatre and a teaching artist for Upstream Arts, working with preschoolers to elders. He is a member of the Butoh group Nenkin Butoh Dan, which received a 2015 Sage Award for Outstanding Dance Ensemble for Fu.Ku.Shi.Ma. Masanari Kawahara was a Playwrights’ Center McKnight Theater Artist Fellow in 2018–2019 and 2010–2011.
Sayge Carroll
Title: TBD
Created and Performed by: Sayge Carroll
Direction: Valerie Oliveiro
Show Description:
This project weaves together a body of original songs, a ritual “recipe book” developed through Sayge’s practice, and a collection of handmade clay instruments—including flutes, udu drums, and percussion pieces. Drawing on a long-standing engagement with ceramics, installation, and community-based art, the work explores how music, ritual action, and clay can create a performative world.
The clay instruments are central: objects formed from the earth that come alive through breath and touch, embodying a relationship between body and material that the performance seeks to deepen. Structured through a series of ritual actions—gestures, ceremonies, and prompts around memory, loss, and transformation—the piece imagines the stage as a living environment where clay, sound, and human bodies interact. Objects are made, played, broken, and remade, inviting audiences into an evolving process of creation and change.
Artist Bio:
Sayge Carroll is a maker of worlds—both in clay and in life. A mother, sister, daughter, and friend, she moves through her communities with warmth, humor, and grounded creativity. Guided by curiosity and care, Sayge builds spaces—physical, emotional, and communal—where people feel welcomed, seen, and invited to show up as their full selves.
A multidisciplinary artist rooted in ceramics and community practice, her work is shaped by rhythm, intuition, and the joy of making. Whether carving clay, composing music, dancing in the kitchen, or dreaming up new ideas, she brings a deep sense of play, purpose, and possibility to everything she touches.
J.H. Shuǐ Xiān
Title: closed for the season
Created and Performed by: J.H. Shuǐ Xiān
Mentor and Rehearsal Director: Morgan Thorson
Show Description:
closed for the season is a full, deep exhale after the frenzy; an effort at starting anew after spells of consternation; a recommitment to the self & surroundings; a settling. a container for rage, depression, dismay. A dialectical integration for the nervous system; an act of care to hold ourselves up; a blessing for sustainment and arrival.
Artist Bio:
J.H. Shuǐ Xiān//Judee is a dancer-choreographer, sound artist, and dabbler of other forms, born and grown in Mni Sóta Makoce, of West African-by way of the Caribbean diaspora, Chinese, German and English descent. Drivers of her work as of late include societal unrest and oppression & the call to active action against it; healing, mental health & sustainability in times of collapse; queer love, intimacy, throes and joy; reaching towards a painless world, reckoning with reality; re-discovering relationships to technique and patterned history+habit in the body endlessly.
Selected works include feral (2025), SPEED OF LIVIDITY (2023), Senescence (2022), 1at2a3new5pace (2022), a dent. (2021), hazephase{one:vogvalley (2019), and e (2017). Her work has been presented through partnerships including ARENA DANCES’ Candy Box festival, HAIRandNAILS Gallery, MN Artists at Walker Art Center, Red Eye Theater’s New Works 4 Weeks festival, and the former Momentum: New Dance Works and Q-Stage New Works series.
Carol Trindade
Title: Persona
Created and Performed by: Carol Trindade
Direction: Suzy Messerole
Music: Dameun Strange
Show Description:
Persona is a journey into the unconscious mind, a solo performance that unfolds in a third dimension. The audience is invited to experience what happens when a person goes through a profound transformation, shedding the masks that once defined them and confronting the hidden parts of themselves. Who are we when we are alone, stripped of everything we thought we were?
Inspired by Kahlil Gibran’s The Madman and Jung’s primordial archetypes, Persona draws from Butoh to explore the hidden depths of human existence. Through raw physicality and emotion, the body becomes a site of dissolution and self-discovery.
Lighting Notice: This performance contains strobe lighting and flashing effects that may affect individuals sensitive to light.
Artist Bio:
Carol Trindade is a Brazilian-born performance artist whose work blends Butoh, contemporary dance, physical theater, and embodied research. Emerging from Curitiba, Carol began performing as a clown at a young age while living in a favela. She studied technical theater at Colégio Estadual do Paraná and contemporary dance at Casa Hoffmann, later co-founding Arcology Zero, an experimental arts organization in Brazil that combined housing, studio space, and artistic residencies for emerging creatives.
Carol’s work is rooted in the body as a place of transformation and reclamation. Drawing from Butoh, contemporary dance, and her lived experiences, she creates performances that move between the strange, the vulnerable, the absurd, and the spiritual. Her practice is often improvisational and deeply physical, using movement to explore identity, control, and how the body creates its own language for what cannot be spoken. Her work has been presented across the United States, Europe, and South America.
Naked Stages FAQ
Where are the performances?
Pillsbury House + Theatre, 3501 Chicago Avenue S, Minneapolis, MN 55407. The lobby opens one hour before showtime.
How much are tickets?
All tickets are pick-your-price—choose the amount that works for you.
Are seats assigned?
Seating is general admission. If you need accessible seating or other accommodations, please contact the box office when booking.
Where can I park?
Free parking is available in the Pillsbury House lot near Full Cycle, just south of 35th Street. Free street parking is also available on Chicago Avenue, 35th Street, and surrounding streets.
Are masks required?
Masks are recommended but optional unless your performance is specifically listed as mask-required.
Is the theatre accessible?
Our entrance, theatre, and restrooms are wheelchair accessible. For accommodation requests, contact Sara at 612-787-3622 or sara@pillsburyhousetheatre.org.
Have ticket questions?
Call the box office at 612-825-0459.