Note: Toot Performance will be updating this website early summer 2023. Stay tuned for some exciting new developments!
Performance for outsiders and insiders
Pinned between the theatre and the theater
On the tip of your tongue
Led by Eric Larson in Minneapolis, Toot Performance develops, presents, and tours original theatrical shows, films, and events.
About Toot Performance
Working
The audience is possessed, the actors are possessed, the artists are possessed. Toot Performance studies the minutia of these possessions. We find overlooked energies and shape them into reflections and actions dedicated to pushing past the present. Our rehearsal processes are rigorous, exploratory, and not always directed towards creating a new piece.
Work
Toot Performance has created two shows and a film, launched the Toot Suite series, and has presented work in four US states. Numerous projects are in development, some building off of prior work and some carving new trajectories. We will also soon be launching an initiative aimed at fostering young “experimental” performance-based artists in Minnesota.
Workers
Toot Performance brings together a wide variety of collaborators to develop each project. From performers to designers, dramaturgs, outside eyes, producers, and conspirators, Toot Performance welcomes collaborators’ whole, complex selves into the artistic process. Our advisory board consists of Emily Gastineau, Jo Kellen, David Melendez, and Sam Aros Mitchell.
As a company that creates non-traditional, often abstract theatre, Toot Performance continually considers and challenges our understandings of our onstage and offstage practices, outside of a storytelling framework, with regards to identity, representation, labor, land, and power. We strive to remove barriers of access for our audiences and collaborators within this historically-white and class-privileged artistic discipline. It’s ongoing work, and it’s embedded within the questions we are exploring in our artistic and behind-the-scenes ethos.
Photo credits: Zoe Cinel (top), Ryan Bockenhauer (left), Valerie Oliveiro (center and right).