From 1996 on…In the spring of 1996, we were looking for rehearsal space for “Bestiality,” and we came across the warehouse space on the backside of 504 Cedar Avenue. The owners, Keith & Vicky Heller of CRLC, let us have the space for cheap or free for the summer (I can’t remember which) while we rehearsed our Fringe show “Passion Playing” and shot scenes for the movie “Beg, Borrow and Steal.”

After the success of the first Barebones Halloween puppet build held at Bedlam that fall, we decided it would be great to keep the warehouse as rehearsal and build space. Rent for the first couple of years was divided up between John Bueche, Jim Bueche, Julian McFaul, Jami Syverson, Mark Safford and Krista Pearson. John & Julian were in the company, and Jim had recently signed on as Bedlam “bidniz manager.” Plus Julian, Mark, Krista and Jami had Barebones in common; Julian and Mark were already infamous puppeteamsters in their own right; and Krista was an established visual and teaching artist. On top of all that, John, Jami, Jim and Julian all had the Seward Community Cafe in common. Maren Ward and Sarah Garner weren’t actually paying rent, but were involved in dreaming, scheming and organizing the whole time as well.

The floors lay bare, brimming with sheer possibility. And Jami bears the dubious distinction of being the first to bring in a load of “really great stuff” that he had dumpstered out of the apartments across the street. As the years went on we’d recognize bits of the never-used crap in periodic dumpster-loads we’d throw away ourselves. But that initial load of crap DID include a vintage surgical lamp, which the couple from across the street said they had acquired when the Nancy Hauser company had moved OUT of our space years before. Later that same lamp, along with our indispensable vintage gurney, became the center piece of “Emergency!” (2002).

But we digress–back to 1996. Soon the main floor was awash in puppets, paintings, projects-in-progress of all shapes and sizes and every random bit of raw material you could imagine. Battle lines were drawn for boundaries between “Mark’s Area,” “Krista’s Area” and “Julian’s Area.” Julian, Jim and Jami had their individual lofts as an escape from the fray. John and Sarah plumbed a shower to increase the crash-pad-ability of the space and keep people working well into the wee hours. In the basement, Jim, Jami and John color coded their tools in the woodshop; Jim collected bicycles, bike parts, tools and how-to manuals to keep us all pedaling; Jami built and equipped a darkroom; and we scrapped together desks and file cabinets for an basement office–which is where you’d most often find John, Jim or Maren. Upstairs, in the old elevator shaft, Julian installed a four-track recorder and a smattering of other sound equipment and we called it “The Woodshed.”

From its founding in 1993 until 1996, Bedlam had been a theater collective cranking out productions on every local stage we could get our hands on. A year BEFORE we acquired the Studio, Bedlam had “once again proven itself to be the smartest, sharpest new theater company in town” according to the Twin Cities Reader. By a year AFTER we acquired the Studio, the City Pages called us the “ultra low-profile Bedlam Theatre”–and they were right. We didn’t get around to another full-blown Bedlam production until “Mahoney’s Mirror,” produced at Red Eye in 1999.

Not that there weren’t performances going on, you just had to wanderby at any time of day or night and there’d be a new puppet contraption being tested, members of the HTC bike club might have stopped by to strap on stilts and blow fire, Jami & Julian would be experimenting with late night naked wrestling, or Jim would be done up in helmet and shoulder pads ramming his bicycle full speed into a twelve foot high piece of garbage.

The performances we were actually bringing out to audiences became short and sweet, hit and run. Like taking over a room at the Soap Factory “Closing Party” to install a set and experiment with a works-in-progress of Mahoney’s Mirror. Bringing short works to Art-a-Whirl, Intermedia Arts, Patrick’s Cabaret, Bryant Lake Bowl, Cedarfest, etc. And then things would happen like Julian and Mark, an organization unto themselves as “The Artists of No Discipline” getting dolled up in a sort of athletic-drag-glam-rockstar costume and each strapping on one roller blade so they could joust with PVC poles and this would be even more fun on the Southern stage and hey, Balls is happening right now! Zamboni was a huge hit, returning to the Best of Balls at the end of that year and becoming a Romp staple for years to come.

Meanwhile, the community building around the Bedlam space was becoming its own production.  In 1996 Bedlam artists played a key-role in the Earth First! “Little Alfie” blockade – and Bedlam became an important gathering place for information and fun during the Minnehaha Free State.  Partnerships with the Psychic Slutz, HiJack, Barebones and others helped push the boundaries.  By 1998, Jim and Jami’s bicycle tools were joined by new volunteers who created the D.I.Y. Grease Pit Bike Shop, sill partnered with Bedlam ten-years later.

In 1998 Julian launched the Bedlam Romp – a party cabaret focused on spectacle madness.  It’s been a West Bank staple ever since, growing ever broader.  The Romp reflected a history of Bedlam’s “Snatches” cabarets of the early years, that we held at the Unicorn Theater or Seward Cafe… bedlam theatre: smell the magic… as well as the punk-y puppet renaissance at Dhann Polnau’s Puppetry Arts Studio in the earlier ’90′s.  I’m pretty sure Krista put together the first cabaret in the new studio – to wild, weird effect, the theme was “ticks.”  HiJack did some great events.  The Unruly Julies plastered each other with peanut butter sandwiches.   When the Romp started, it sort of brought it all together.  Let’s see how far is too far.  Live arts about community, wander around, check it out, heckle if you have to, get involved.

In 2000 we first tried the move to full-on theater venue, with freewheeling in the Attic of Whim, offering pay-what-you-think-it$-wortth tickets for the first time, the great, rolling, raked stage that stayed up for a re-run through 2001.

In 2002 the studio was pushed to its physical limits as 75 volunteers over three months helped build the Terminus space ship.  Terminus was adapted from the short stories of Stanislaw Lem.
The spaceship was a metal frame with wooden stages covered in three-dozen refrigerator boxes.  It encompassed the audience and spun around them for the effect of blast off.  Terminus would stand as Bedlam’s biggest smash hit for four more years.