In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre Presents
Due to COVID-19 all programing & performances have been postponed
You can read our full COVID-19 Update here.
We hope to reschedule these performances at a later date and look forward to connecting with you digitally in the days and weeks to come!
an immersive, intergenerational, sober evening of stories, music, and community, with a light meal.
All ticket income will benefit Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN)
Coming Home to Wild reminds us: we are not the only ones wondering what wholeness feels like as the world burns. Through music, puppet performance, and a light community meal we will strengthen our collective resistance and resilience.
Experience new puppet works by Julie Boada (Anishinabe), Rebekah Crisanta de Ybarra (Maya-Lenca), and Wild Conspiracy (Elle Thoni and company) and Montana Cypress (Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida) with New Native Theatre who ask: in the face of extinction and climate catastrophe, what do our ancestors have to teach us about resilience? You are invited to join the circle as our ancestors, human and more than human, speak, sing, and soar. Encounter stories of our time that awaken rather than paralyze reminding us of the world as it truly is, in all its beauty and its pain.
Together we will answer the call to come back to the truth of who we are: wild.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Performances
March 21st, 7pm
March 28th, 7pm
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Accessibility
The March 28th performance will include ASL Interpretation and a post-performance panel discussion.
This is a SOBER show -- the HOBT bar will be open providing nonalcoholic drinks. After the show, alcoholic beverages will be available for a toast.
Tickets on Sale Now
Sliding scale tickets are offered to everyone, no-questions-asked. "Pay what you can" tickets will be available at the door, pending availability. All tickets include a light meal.
We welcome an intergenerational, multi-cultural audience, reflective of the artists Indigenous, Latinx, and Queer/Trans communities. All are welcome!
100% of ticket income will go to the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) to support their organizing efforts to stop the Line 3 pipeline. If you are a white settler, we encourage you to reflect on that identity and give as you are able.
More about IEN IEN is an alliance of Indigenous peoples whose mission it is to protect the sacredness of Earth Mother from contamination and exploitation by strengthening, maintaining and respecting Indigenous teachings and natural laws.
Learn more at www.ienearth.org
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Journey Home by Julie Boada (Anishinabe)
A child wanders lost and alone in a strange and scary world. The ancient ones gently guide the young one on a journey back to their truth. As they travel they reconnect with the wild beauty within and without and are challenged to honor the gifts we have all been given. Family-friendly, recommended for preschool and older.
Songs of Resistance for Apocalyptic Times by Lady Xok & Friends
Lady Xok/Rebekah Crisanta de Ybarra (Maya-Lenca) will perform live music animated by light and shadow projections reflecting on the extinction and resilience of Indigenous lands, violence against women along the pipelines, and the shadowy corruption that threatens Mother Earth.
Lady Xok will be joined by New Native Theatre for a reading of The Secret Annual Meeting of the Free World Animal Coalition for Perpetual Endurance, a short play by Montana Cypress (Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida). Facing the harsh reality of their demise due to extinction and human progress, animals from all over the world come together in an emergency meeting to discuss the potential possibility of prolonging their fates, but it comes at a price.
Saber, MN by Elle Thoni (Anglo-Norse Settler)
The township of Saber, MN hasn’t made news since one of its farmers discovered a saber-tooth skull in 1883. Yet, when the City Council considers reopening an abandoned quarry, the woods surrounding the town become home to a host of supernatural fauna. Why are extinct animals coming back - and what are they after? A dark tale about haunted woods and resource extraction, Saber MN asks you to confront the wilderness within. Recommended ages 8 and up.
About the Artists
Julie Boada is an Anishinabe artist, storyteller, puppeteer and arts educator. She has a B.A. in Studio Arts and American Indian Studies from the University of Minnesota. For the past 30 years she has worked with such organizations as In the Heart of the Beast Theater, Minnesota History Center, ArtStart, New Native Theater, Z Puppets, Fergus Falls Center for the Arts and the LA Music Center. Some of her favorite projects have been partnerships with arts organizations and natural resource organizations like the DNR. Together with her husband they perform nine touring shows for schools, libraries and community organizations, locally and regionally. Julie has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation and the Metropolitan Arts Council. She is a co-recipient of an Ivey Award. She is passionate about work that engages, connects and fosters cultural pride.
Lady Xok and Friends
Rebekah Crisanta de Ybarra a.k.a. Lady Xøk (Maya-Lenca) is a Twin-Cities based interdisciplinary artist, musician, and culture bearer whose work is rooted in Indigenous Futurisms. Her experimental interdisciplinary social practice (visual art, music, theatre, dance) seeks to shift consciousness around immigration, borders, exodus and interconnectedness of Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. Inspired by American Blues and Nueva Canción, Lady Xøk uses electric, acoustic, and Mesoamerican instruments and creates multimedia installations of light projections in which she performs jaguar mask work for experimental storytelling. Rebekah co-founded Electric Machete Studios, a Latinx Art + Music production house. Current projects include remapping Maya constellations to decolonize star knowledge in the diaspora, touring her intergenerational puppetry play Star Girl Clan with New Native Theatre to foster North-South connections, and language revitalization via children's books and a vinyl release by KRSM radio. www.rebekahcrisanta.com @
New Native Theatre Based in the Twin Cities, New Native Theatre is a new way of looking at, thinking about, and staging Native American stories. Created in 2009 by playwright, Rhiana Yazzie, NNT produces, commissions, and devises authentic Native American stories for the stage which means NNT’s artists are intricately connected to the concerns and voices of their communities. NNT’s plays are shorthand meant to be played for its most vital audiences, Native people, because when specific stories are made for Native community itself, they become undeniably powerful for the broader community too, no translations required.
Wild Conspiracy
Elle Thoni is a playwright, performance-maker, public artist, producer, and arts organizer of Anglo-Norse Settler descent working in/with the Upper Mississippi watershed on Dakota land. Elle draws on theatre’s mythic roots to tell stories about how our sense of belonging and identity are changing with our climate. Her works are odes to emergent ecologies wherein humans are but one of the actors in a much larger drama. Prone to a lyrical epicness, Elle readily collaborate with movement-based performers, musicians, and makers of all sorts to construct lush, multi-layered performances that audiences want to live in. Her most recent musical with Dameun Strange, Queen B: A New Work of Honeybee Futurism is preparing to swarm to green spaces and farms across Minnesota in summer 2020 under the banner of Wild Conspiracy. You can find out more and say hello at ellethoni.com
