Episode 55: Pillsbury House + Theatre - Chapter 1

Pillsbury House + Theatre is a groundbreaking “new model for human service work that recognizes the power of the arts and culture to stimulate community participation, investment and ownership.” This is the first of two PH+T chapters.

This is a 2 Part show. Here is a link to Chapter 2 and the Bonus Episode: Lorraine Hansberry @ Pillsbury House + Theatre - Gifted & Black

Signe V. Harriday is Artistic Producing Director at Pillsbury House + Theatre. Signe is a fierce visionary and powerful storyteller who crafts theatre that awakens our individual and collective humanity. As a director, multidisciplinary artist, activist, and facilitator, she uses theatre as a catalyst to ask questions about who we are and who we are in relation to each other.Past accomplishments include:

Associate Company Member of Pillsbury House Theatre.

Co-founder of Million Artist Movement, a collective of artists committed to Black liberation.

Co-founder of the award-winning synchronized swimming team, The Subversive Sirens.

Founder of Rootsprings Coop, a retreat center for BIPOC artists/activists/healers.

Co-founder of MaMa mOsAiC, a women of color theater company whose mission is to evoke positive social change through female centered work.

Core team member of REP Community Partners.

Signe earned her MFA in Acting at the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard and Moscow Art Theatre.

Current projects: Director of Bridgforth’s bull-jean stories, Associate Director of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower Opera, Choreography for Love of Silver Water, Playwright for Dysmorphia. Recent directing credits: Dining with the Ancestors, Fannie Lou Hammer Speak On It, Hidden Heroes

Noël Raymond is the Co-Artistic Managing Director at Pillsbury House + Theater. Noël holds an MFA in Acting from the University of Minnesota and a BFA from Ithaca College in New York. She currently serves on the Boards of Directors of the Multicultural Development Center and the Burning House Group Theatre Company which she co-founded in 1993. She is also a company member of Carlyle Brown and Company. She has taught acting classes and theatre movement in multiple settings to children, college students and adults with developmental disabilities.  

Noël is an Equity actor who has performed with Pillsbury House Theatre, the Burning House Group, the Guthrie Theater, Penumbra Theatre, Bryant Lake Bowl, and Minnesota Festival Theatres in Minnesota as well as the Hangar Theatre in New York. Noël’s directing credits include Underneath the Lintel, An Almost Holy Picture, Far Away, Angels in America: Parts I and II, and [sic] at Pillsbury House Theatre, From Shadows to Light at Theatre Mu, The BI Show with MaMa mOsAiC, and multiple staged readings and workshops through the Playwrights’ Center, among others. Noël has served on numerous panels including TCG/American Theatre, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Playwright’s Center and United Arts, to name a few.

Mike Hoyt: Mike is a visual artist and Pillsbury’s Creative Community Liason. For nearly twenty years he has been producing, managing, and directing arts-based community development projects and youth development programs, while making his own art in his community. Creating and facilitating unique shared experiences that connect diverse and often non traditional art audiences drive his art practice. Hoyt’s work has been exhibited locally and abroad at the Seoul Olympic Museum of Art, Arts At...

Pillsbury House + Theatre is a groundbreaking “new model for human service work that recognizes the power of the arts and culture to stimulate community participation, investment and ownership.” This is the first of two PH+T chapters.

This is a 2 Part show. Here is a link to Chapter 2 and the Bonus Episode: Lorraine Hansberry @ Pillsbury House + Theatre - Gifted & Black

Signe V. Harriday is Artistic Producing Director at Pillsbury House + Theatre. Signe is a fierce visionary and powerful storyteller who crafts theatre that awakens our individual and collective humanity. As a director, multidisciplinary artist, activist, and facilitator, she uses theatre as a catalyst to ask questions about who we are and who we are in relation to each other.Past accomplishments include:

Associate Company Member of Pillsbury House Theatre.

Co-founder of Million Artist Movement, a collective of artists committed to Black liberation.

Co-founder of the award-winning synchronized swimming team, The Subversive Sirens.

Founder of Rootsprings Coop, a retreat center for BIPOC artists/activists/healers.

Co-founder of MaMa mOsAiC, a women of color theater company whose mission is to evoke positive social change through female centered work.

Core team member of REP Community Partners.

Signe earned her MFA in Acting at the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard and Moscow Art Theatre.

Current projects: Director of Bridgforth’s bull-jean stories, Associate Director of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower Opera, Choreography for Love of Silver Water, Playwright for Dysmorphia. Recent directing credits: Dining with the Ancestors, Fannie Lou Hammer Speak On It, Hidden Heroes

Noël Raymond is the Co-Artistic Managing Director at Pillsbury House + Theater. Noël holds an MFA in Acting from the University of Minnesota and a BFA from Ithaca College in New York. She currently serves on the Boards of Directors of the Multicultural Development Center and the Burning House Group Theatre Company which she co-founded in 1993. She is also a company member of Carlyle Brown and Company. She has taught acting classes and theatre movement in multiple settings to children, college students and adults with developmental disabilities.  

Noël is an Equity actor who has performed with Pillsbury House Theatre, the Burning House Group, the Guthrie Theater, Penumbra Theatre, Bryant Lake Bowl, and Minnesota Festival Theatres in Minnesota as well as the Hangar Theatre in New York. Noël’s directing credits include Underneath the Lintel, An Almost Holy Picture, Far Away, Angels in America: Parts I and II, and [sic] at Pillsbury House Theatre, From Shadows to Light at Theatre Mu, The BI Show with MaMa mOsAiC, and multiple staged readings and workshops through the Playwrights’ Center, among others. Noël has served on numerous panels including TCG/American Theatre, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Playwright’s Center and United Arts, to name a few.

Mike Hoyt: Mike is a visual artist and Pillsbury’s Creative Community Liason. For nearly twenty years he has been producing, managing, and directing arts-based community development projects and youth development programs, while making his own art in his community. Creating and facilitating unique shared experiences that connect diverse and often non traditional art audiences drive his art practice. Hoyt’s work has been exhibited locally and abroad at the Seoul Olympic Museum of Art, Arts At Marks Garage in Honolulu, University of Hawaii Art Gallery, Pillsbury House + Theatre, Soap Factory, Soo Visual Arts Center, Intermedia Arts, Franconia Sculpture Park, Art Shanty Projects, and the Walker Art Center among others. He has received awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, a Northern Lights.mn Art(ists) on the Verge Fellowship, a Jerome Visual Artist Fellowship, and a McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship.

Hoyt has the added benefit of raising a family three blocks from PH+T and is honored to have the opportunity to engage local artists and community members in creative practice towards the development of a vibrant and healthy community for all of its members.

Pillsbury House + Theatre A cultural landmark at the crossroads of four historic and diverse Minneapolis neighborhoods, Pillsbury House + Theatre (PH+T) unites innovative human services with professional arts experiences for 30,000 residents who call the area home. A hub for transformational art that brings the public as close as possible to the best local talent while engaging important conversations that lead to positive change. Visit pillsburyhouseandtheatre.org for upcoming performances.

Pillsbury United Communities Beginning in 1879 with Minneapolis’s first settlement house, Pillsbury United Communities co-creates enduring change toward a just society. Built with and for historically marginalized and underinvested groups across our community, our united system of programs, neighborhood centers, and social enterprises connects more than 55,000 individuals and their families each year. We are guided by a vision of thriving communities where every person has personal, social, and economic power.

Dakota Uprising / US- Dakota War: Viewed in a larger historical context, the Dakota War was part of a series of conflicts that have been called the American Indian Wars. These caused, together with starvation and disease, a massive decimation of the Indian population across the United States. Following these repeated attempts to destroy Native American populations, the United States government embarked on a policy of assimilation towards indigenous people into Euro-American society. These policies would remain in effect until well into the second half of the twentieth century.   

George Floyd: On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was suffocated by a police officer in Minneapolis, while three other officers looked on. This tragic murder was not a one-off or something that can be attributed to a rogue officer: George Floyd has joined a long list of black men, women, and children who have been killed in recent years by police officers in the US. (Here is a list of some of the names of black people killed by the police since Eric Garner's murder in 2014 and George Floyd's murder this year.) Protests have since erupted all over the world, not only in response to George Floyd’s murder, but also in response to the systemic racism that has devalued black lives,  and has left black people vulnerable to police brutality and inequality. In the UK, Black Lives Matter UK has organized countless protests in towns and cities across the country: people have taken to the streets in their thousands to not only demand justice for George Floyd, but also to call for an end to systemic racism. 

The One Parenting Decision that Really Matters, Atlantic Monthly, May, 2022: Summary) Parents make an estimated 1,750 difficult decisions during the first year of their kid's life. Almost none of them matter as much as parents think they do, writes Seth Stephens-Davidowitz in The Atlantic. But there is one decision that seems to have a substantial long-term impact on a child's wellbeing: where they were raised. Research suggests that the best cities can increase a child's future income by about 12 percent, for example. According to Stephens-Davidowitz's estimation, "some 25 percent — and possibly more — of the overall effects of a parent are driven by where that parent raises their child."

CSA (Community Supported Agriculture): Community-supported agriculture (CSA model) or cropsharing is a system that connects producers and consumers within the food system closer by allowing the consumer to subscribe to the harvest of a certain farm or group of farms. It is an alternative socioeconomic model of agriculture and food distribution that allows the producer and consumer to share the risks of farming.[1] The model is a subcategory of civic agriculture that has an overarching goal of strengthening a sense of community through local markets.[2]

Chicago Avenue Project: ince 1996, the Chicago Avenue Project has brought local youth together with the Twin Cities’ best adult playwrights, actors, and directors to create and produce original plays. The Chicago Avenue Project features two performances each year. For the spring performance, kids and their adult acting mentors star in 10-minute plays written just for them by adult playwrights. For the winter performance, kids and their adult playwriting mentors write 10-minute plays that are performed by adult actors. The result is original theatre that is heartwarming, hilarious, and infused with the brilliance of young minds. The project is not about teaching youth to perform, though they do learn acting—nor is it about teaching them how to write plays, though they learn that, too. The Chicago Avenue Project gives every child—no matter their circumstances—the opportunity to discover that they have a lot of creativity and value to offer.

What to Send Up When it Goes Down by Aleshea Harris: What to Send Up When It Goes Down is a play, a ritual, and a home-going celebration that bears witness to the physical and spiritual deaths of Black people as a result of racist violence. Setting out to disrupt the pervasiveness of anti-Blackness and acknowledge the resilience of Black people throughout history, Aleshea Harris’s acclaimed, groundbreaking play blurs the boundaries between actors and audiences, offering a space for catharsis, discussion, reflection, and healing. The play was created for a Black audience, but all are welcome. The intention of the play is to create a space for as many Black-identifying audience members as possible.

A Streetcar Named Desire: Streetcar Named Desire is a play written by Tennessee Williams and first performed on Broadway on December 3, 1947.[1] The play dramatizes the experiences of Blanche DuBois, a former Southern belle who, after encountering a series of personal losses, leaves her once-prosperous situation to move into a shabby apartment in New Orleans rented by her younger sister and brother-in-law.

Williams' most popular work, A Streetcar Named Desire is one of the most critically acclaimed plays of the twentieth century.[1] It still ranks among his most performed plays, and has inspired many adaptations in other forms, notably a critically acclaimed film that was released in 1951.[2]