'24-'25 Performance Partnership Program
The Southern Theater’s Performance Partnership Program (PPP) is a competitive program that gives artists and non-profit performing arts organizations the opportunity to present their work at The Southern Theater. Our desire in offering this program is to support emerging artists and underrepresented stories, offering a space for individuals and collectives to work on their craft and build an audience without financial burden.
Here's our list of '24-'25 Partners!
MARGARET OGAS PERFORMANCE PROJECT
SOULQUAKES, a new dance by Margaret Ogas, explores Nepantla - a term with Nahuatl origins, used by Chicanos to describe the sense of existing in between worlds. The liminal space of nepantla is a land of both pain and rebirth, of heartbreak and limitless possibility.
Featuring a cast of five movement artists, this collaborative work asks how people of various diasporas navigate the grief and euphoria of existing in liminality. Through nonlinear storytelling, humor, and embodied improvisation, the cast explores heartbreak, belonging, and what it means to enter a constant state of becoming.
Tickets are now available to this world premiere on Dec. 13 and 14, 2024.
SPACETIME THEATRE
Jolene and Steve Jenkins learn the value of love, patience, vulnerability, and forgiveness while waiting for the notoriously-late Blue Line. Spacetime Theatre presents a physical comedy about difficult weirdos and a baseball.
ZOË KOENIG AND NORA NYGARD
Choreographer Zoë Koenig and composer Nora Nygard present Physical Prizes.
Zoë Koenig is a Minneapolis-based dancer and choreographer committed to producing surreal works that balance a search for emotional and physical extremes with humor and absurdity, forming an expansive movement palette and distinctive musical score for each dance through intensive research and experimentation. Her work has been presented in the Twin Cities at the Walker Art Center, the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts, the Southern Theater, and other theater and gallery spaces, and has been supported by the Minnesota State Arts Board, Analog Dance Works, Alternative Motion Project, and the Cowles Center’s Generating Room artist residency program.
Nora Nygard is a composer and songwriter from North Dakota currently based in the Twin Cities. Since 2008, Nygard has published numerous solo albums alongside hundreds of releases with various groups, including her experimental multi-genre project Citizen Scientist. After growing up touring with punk and emo bands, she dedicated herself to sound design and synthesis while working as an audio engineer recording and producing for commercial projects and independent artists. Her recent album The Ghosts Beneath Our Feet (2022), the result of a fifteen-year creative process, documents grief, dysphoria, alienation, and the experience of being haunted by dead loved ones. Nygard collaborated with Zoë Koenig on the sound design for Cloud Cover (2022) and Duel Duel Revolution (2023). Their collaboration has since evolved into an ongoing practice of simultaneous choreography and music development for new performance works that consider and unsettle relationships between sound, movement, and audiences.
26 BATS!
A circus pop band from Minneapolis. Fronted by the transgender nonbinary legend, Babo aka Bailey 26 Cogan (they/them) and accompanied by their gentle giant bestie, Karl Remus (he/him) on guitar, synths, and production. This duo is electrifying live and turns the party out with nasty grooves & riffs, catchy melodies, and portal opening lyricism. Coined 'the Genre Rebel' by Growler Mag, they wrote "26 BATS! has successfully garnered a following comprised of all kinds of music lovers. Being unmoored to any one genre puts the group in a unique spot, allowing them to share bills with a variety of acts: from Afrobeat legend Femi Kuti, Black Pumas, and Kirin J Callinan, to the silky, beat-laden Dua Saleh."
NERVOUS THEATRE
Nervous Theatre is a nomadic theatrical collective creating ensemble-driven productions. Their work exploits (and celebrates) the ‘liveness’ of theatre for all its physical and communal possibilities. The company, founded by artistic director Connor Berkompas, grew out of The Boston Conservatory where its founding members met.
Hailed as "Ambitious and Fabulous" by The San Diego Reader and recognized as "an electrifying company to keep a close eye on" by The Arts Business, Nervous Theatre’s eclectic body of work has been presented by arts organizations across the nation. Notable venues include Tinworks Art and The Ellen Theatre (Bozeman, MT), Gloucester Stage Company and The Boston Conservatory (MA), and Surel’s Place (Boise, ID).
Previous productions include the original works A MARVELOUS PARTY (created in residency at Surel’s Place), STRANGE MATING CALLS (Tinworks Art), and MOMMY’S DEAD AND THEY BURIED HER IN MOSCOW (Derek Award, Edinburgh Fringe 2021), as well as radically reimagined productions of Genet’s THE MAIDS and Brecht’s CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE.
Nervous Theatre makes their Minneapolis debut with DANCING ANIMALS, a new dance-theatre work premiering at The Southern Theater as part of their Performance Partnership Program.
MERIT THURSDAY AND GABRIEL RODREICK
A two-man performance art piece that explores the relationship between the Beast and the Bolol, and the place they call home, the Bog. Peek into the Bog for an evening of getting to know them and their home through movement, sounds, storytelling, light and shadow.