Season Announcements & #GTMD17!

WOW. It's already that time of year again – Give to the Max Day is right around the corner, a week from today on Thursday, November 16. #GTMD17 is Minnesota’s annual giving holiday, and this year we’re a little more excited than usual. Why, might you ask? Well, we’ve been around since 2014, but 2017 was by far our busiest and most productive year so far. And not only that, we’ve expanded the artists associated with our collective and we have so much more original, ensemble-driven work planned for the year ahead!

Here’s what we’ve been up to recently:

In August 2017, we presented the critically-acclaimed world premiere of SKINS at the Minnesota Fringe Festival. This new play was written in collaboration with our frequent co-conspirator Emily Dendinger, and developed over a period of several months with our core ensemble. Wrote Laura VanZandt from One Girl, Two Cities about the production: “I see this show as a feminist’s version of Cinderella, and I want Collective Unconscious to remake all of the fairy tales this way."

SKINS, featuring Logan Verdoorn, Sarah Modena, and Emily Zimmer (Photos by Anna Schultz and the Minnesota Fringe Festival)

Right after Fringe was over, we dove into fabricating puppets for Little Red, a short film with puppets that we co-directed with the incomparable filmmaker Laura Lechner. Little Red is our first-ever film, and marks as the beginning of an exploration investigating the boundaries between theatre and film.

(L-R) Director of Photography Joe Valenzuela and performer Angela Olson (Photo by Laura Lechner)

We concluded principle photography for Little Red this past October. This short film will be completed in spring 2018, and we'll be entering it into film festivals as well as organizing local screenings at that time. We promise to keep you in the loop on these exciting developments later this spring!

Film stills from Little Red, featuring Angela Olson and Sarah Parker (Joe Valenzuela, Director of Photography)

And, drumroll please….

We recently commissioned another new play, to be written in collaboration with Emily Dendinger. This new play, entitled Le Cirque Féerique, is currently in development with our core group of collaborators.

(L-R) Alison Ruth, Sofia Lindgren Galloway, and Libby Porter meeting with playwright Emily Dendinger via Skype to discuss research for Le Cirque Féerique (Photo by David Hanzal)

We’ll be presenting a reading of this work-in-progress in February 2018, and then we’ll mount the world premiere production in October 2018. Keep your eyes peeled - we’ll be announcing a venue and performance dates soon.

A week from now, on #GTMD17, we’ll be celebrating our past and our future on Facebook! This is an exciting time for our small-but-mighty-theatre troupe - we’re over the moon about how far we’ve come over the last few years, and where we are going to next! If you’re able to, I hope that you’ll donate to our artistic work via our GiveMN page on #GTMD17 (and, to “avoid the lines”, you can even schedule your gift now!).

But, if your wallet is feeling a little lighter than usual at this time of the year, you can still support us by spreading the word about our company, or by liking and sharing our #GTMD17 posts on Facebook next week. :-)

Thank you for your continued support – it’s no easy feat creating original, ensemble-driven theatre, and we couldn’t do it without all of YOU, our audiences and our collaborators. Onward!

xoxo,
David.

P.S. I know, I know. We’ve been away from this blog for much too long, but we’ve been busy little bees over these past several months! If you’d like more frequent updates from us, be sure to like us on Facebook or join our mailing list today.