Barebones Productions

Outdoor Puppetry and Performance Art Spectacles

BareBones Productions is a community-based, tenacious little Minneapolis performing arts non-profit, incorporated in 2000.  Our Mission is “To bring art into community and community into art through movement, puppetry and spectacle performance; creative re-use, education, and collaboration.”  We succeed as an exuberant mix of semi-polished and pro-level artists and organizers to produce spectacular outdoor performances and parade sections, generally involving giant puppets, stilters, and bikes. Our main production is the annual “Halloween Outdoor Puppet Extravaganza”, a magnificent and mysterious festival-pageant that is part community theater and part public ritual, now in it's twenty-sixth season. 26 Years!

BareBones has also produced five intrepid “Winter Pageants” on snow and ice, and eleven irreverent “Dumpster Duels” performance competitions based on scavenged junk, truly unruly summer theater throw-downs revived in 2013.  Our venues have been public parks and spaces around the Twin Cities including Minnehaha Falls Park and the Midtown Public Market in Minneapolis, and Dunning Fields and Hidden Falls Regional Park in St. Paul.

In addition, BareBones has performed in parades and other public escapades across the region including the Independence Day Parade in Marine-on-St. Croix, the Labor Day Picnic at Harriet Island, the Bike-In at the Bell Museum, the St. Paul Classic Bicycle Tour, the Minneapolis Peace Games, and the MN State Fair Mall Parade.

For fourteen years, BareBones has provided chimerical  Spring Break and Summer arts residencies for resident kids of several area housing agencies, including the Twin Cities Housing Development Corporation at Calibre Ridge in Roseville and Liberty Plaza in St. Paul, and Opportunity Neighborhood at Garden View Apartments in New Brighton.

Puppets!