Mission: To bring art into community and community into art through movement, puppetry and spectacle performance, creative re-use, education, and collaboration.
BareBones Productions is a Minneapolis-based 501(c)(3) performing arts non-profit. We operate as a collective of visual and performing artists to produce visionary parade sections, outdoor installations, and spectacle performances, generally involving stilting, bicycles, and great big puppets.
Our grandest production is The Annual Halloween Outdoor Puppet Extravaganza, a cult favorite throughout the Twin Cities.
Over the years, BareBones has also produced five annual Winter Pageants on ice and snow, five summertime Dumpster Duels performance competitions based on scavenged garbage, and various other outdoor puppet shows including The Little Match Girl and Raven Steals the Sun.
Our venues have been public parks and other public spaces around the Twin Cities. These include Minnehaha Falls Park and Theodore Wirth Park in Minneapolis, Dunning Fields and Hidden Falls Regional Park in St. Paul, the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, and the parking lots at Bedlam Theatre and the Midtown Public Market in Minneapolis.
BareBones has performed in parades and escapades throughout the Twin Cities metro area including the Independence Day parades in Edina and Marine-on-St. Croix, the Minneapolis Aquatennial Torchlight Parade, the Midtown Greenway Parade Of Arts, the annual Labor Day Picnic at Harriet Island in St. Paul, the Bike-In at the Bell Museum, the St. Paul Classic Bike Tour, the Minneapolis Peace Games, and the Minnesota State Fair Mall Parade.
In addition, BareBones has, for many summers, provided visual and performing arts residencies for youth under contract with the Twin Cities Housing Development Corporation. Our TCHDC residencies have included Calibre Ridge in Roseville in collaboration with Campfire USA and Liberty Plaza in St. Paul in collaboration with Concordia University. More recently, BareBones partnered for a Spring Break residency with Opportunity Neighborhood at Garden View Apartments in Brooklyn Center.
Board of Directors
- Arwen Wilder (Co-Chair)
- Peter Schulze (Co-Chair and Treasurer)
- Pasha Milbrath (Secretary)
- Mina Leierwood (member-at-large)
- Phil Dumka (member-at-large)
- Tara Fahey (member-at-large)
- Earnest bugg (member-at-large)
2025 Statement of Intention
BareBones exists to present the Halloween Extravaganza. The Extravaganza offers us and our communities the opportunity to name, mourn and honor the dead. We remember both the known and unknown dead, including the victims of neglect, police brutality and genocide. The extravaganza is a way to turn our personal and collective loss and grief into community ritual and art as we enter the coldest and darkest time of the year. As artists our tools are vision, manifestation, and transformation. We need this in 2025.
Barebones, and each of us in the framework of the United States, exist within a history of extraction, theft, genocide, slavery and white-body supremacy. We live and work and make art in the context of systems which, historically and currently, build inequity and division. These systems create a context of massive brutality by those in power at every level, which rips from us our humanity and our connection to our bodies and the earth.
In recent years we have taken steps towards undoing white-body supremacy within BareBones, with an eye on Minneapolis and the larger culture of patriarchy, capitalism and fascism. We promise to keep doing that. Here are some specific actions we will take towards this goal”
Removing barriers to participation: In addition to increasing staff pay, as able, we will provide food at every build and rehearsal. We will set aside money for extra childcare, and transportation needs.
Hiring: This year, as we have for multiple years, we commit to hiring — especially to leadership positions — more than 50% people who are Black, Indigenous, people of color, transgender, queer, people with disabilities and women.
Accessibility: Barebones is aware it is not possible to meet every accessibility need but we strive to meet as many as our resources and understanding allow. This includes providing ASL interpretation for some builds, rehearsals and performances. It includes “masked-only” sections for the audience. It includes hiring pedicabs and paying for wheelchair accessible equipment.
Learning/unlearning: We believe in learning at every age and to that end we will offer specific workshops, events and culture building around:
Unlearning white supremacy
Supporting BIPoC staff and volunteers
Creating cultures of care, curiosity and consent
Turning away from cultural appropriation towards both inclusion and self-reflection
Safety and abolitionism: We are trying to move towards a community and culture without policing and without punishment. That looks like people helping each other solve conflicts. That looks like building relationships and meeting difficulties with bravery curiosity and compassion. That looks like building our capacity to handle conflict and difference. That looks like training and education and bravery. That looks like a community based security organization as a police-free alternative for keeping BareBones audiences safer.
Permissions: We want to deeply listen to the land, the community, the bodies and the stories of many people and creatures near where we live, build and perform the show. We want to hear and honor and include without using, taking or stealing.
We hope you will join us to make BareBones 2025 what this community needs it to be.
All photos on this page by Max Haynes