The Outer Limit of the Local Imagination Since 1993. Bedlam Theatre’s Mission is to produce radical works of theater with a focus on collaboration and a unique blend of professional and community art.

Throughout it’s first decade Bedlam cultivated a distinctive aesthetic  combining an overtly playful performance style with low-tech spectacle, bold visuals, experimental absurdism, both cuttingly-direct and nonsensically-obtuse satyric barbarism, socio-political imagination, and usually some live music.

“More fun is had than in any six months of normal theater.”
City Pages on 100 Years of Pure Shit: UBU ROI (1996)

Today, Bedlam provides a steady diet of original, avant-garde for Minneapolis and regional audiences.  Bedlam Productions vary from 5mins to Full Length and evolve through creative processes that can last 2 weeks to 10 years.   As a venue Bedlam supports a year-round calendar of local, national and international artists, in theater, dance, music, puppetry, performance art and more.   And as artists, we try new things, so that no year in fourteen has ever been exactly like the last.

“..the gutsiest, riskiest theater around.”
-StarTribune on freewheeling in the Attic of Whim (2001)

Collaborative/Professional/Community.  Bedlam Theatre builds culture and community through and around experimental performing arts – and their audiences. We support artists that challenge not just form and content but process as well on their adventure to reflect, celebrate and reinvent themselves and their society.  We create an atmosphere of dialog with artists and audience.  We provide direct engagement through our community programs and partnerships and frequently in our productions.   Once you’ve joined the loyal following, chances are at some point you’ll cross the line from seeing theater to being theater.

“You cannot exit Bedlam’s production without applauding the sheer daring of its young artists. Go to Bedlam Theatre because then, and only then, can you claim ownership of a truly broad spectrum of consciousness regarding what is possible in the fantastic world of live theater!”
—Star-Tribune on TERMINUS (2002)

BEDLAM HISTORY
Bedlam Theatre was founded in 1993 by a group of artists to create original theater with a social conscience and explore collaborative ways of working.

“Bedlam” the word is a slangy abbreviation of Bethlehem, as in Our Lady of Bethlehem, a renowned insane asylum on the outskirts of London.  For more than a century, perhaps as a way to help pay the bills, Bedlam would open it doors to both high society and low brow thrill seekers who could pay a penny and walk among the inmates.  Occasionally, political dissidents, rather than to prison or the gallows, would be certified insane (crazy enough at least to speak out against the powers that be).  “The only place to hear the truth spoken in all of England is among the madmen of Bedlam,” reads one quote from the time.  It’s the type of entertainment Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre certainly competed with.  It’s posited by numerous scholars that the psychological depth of his characters were in no small part influenced by the popular attractions at Bedlam.

But that was then.  Over the last 17 years Bedlam Theatre in Minneapolis has built a devoted following and received critical acclaim for our distinct aesthetic. Bedlam was named Best Theater for Comedy by the City Pages in 2002, and our productions, freewheeling in the Attic of Whim (2000) and TERMINUS (2002), were cited by the City Pages as Top Ten productions. In 2004 Bedlam was featured in the cover story of American Theater Magazine: “Hot, Hip and on the Verge: A dozen young American companies you need to know.”

In 1996, we established Bedlam Studio in the West Bank neighborhood as a factory of imagination in Minneapolis’ historic theater district. By 2000 it had evolved into an experimental performance box that served as the center for the invention of new work by Bedlam as well as theater, dance, puppet and performance artists from the Twin Cities and beyond. Bedlam has always been a gathering center for social justice groups and since 1998 housed our community partner the Grease Pit Bicycle Shop. Today our new West Bank location continues to serve as a bustling, creative community center with Bedlam Theatre at its heart.

In 2002 we began to develop new strategies to build and focus community involvement. We opened up studio projects and set construction to regular community volunteer days and launched the annual BEDLAM COMMUNITY TEN-MINUTE PLAY FESTIVAL. In 2006, community involvement reached a new peak with WEST BANK STORY, which told the stories of past and present residents of Minneapolis’ West Bank neighborhood. Bedlam’s biggest ever sell-out hit and a catalyst for precipitous change into 2007, West Bank Story introduced both new audiences and community participants to our diverse programs.

In 2007 we made the move two blocks and a hundred possibilities away from our home of ten years.  During the era of Bedlam Studio we hid-out, workshopped, built a loyal following and the beginnings of a Minneapolis Institution.

In the new world of the Bedlam Social we’ve taken the informal social hub of Bedlam Studio and made it official.  We’ve got more space and resources for new work that’s more wildly imaginative than ever.   We’ve got a full-on restaurant, beer & wine bar with artists and audience in a nightly dialog like never before.  We’ve got the capacity for more local and international guest productions, a fantastic mainstage as well as lounge spaces for the late-night music, performance art and experimental mayhem.   And of course more ways for you to get involved.  Come on over to Bedlam and SEE ART, EAT ART, BE ART.

Bedlam’s Goals continue to be:
• To foster the development of new performing arts
and new performing artists.
• To engage community in the creative process.
• To operate Bedlam Theatre, the venue as an exciting
hub for risk taking.