Open Window Theatre Launches 2020 Redemption Season

After a 3-year hiatus, Open Window Theatre is launching its 2020 Season in a brand-new space with U.S. and regional premieres and a monthly cultural series. It is rare for a theatre to shut down and then return with a larger space, an expanded staff, and more ambitious artistic programming, but Open Window Theatre's loyal audience raised $250,000 to re-launch, leasing a 9,600-square-foot space (30% larger than its previous home) and building a brand-new 170-seat black box theatre in the Salem Square Center. Open Window also hired its first full-time managing director, Cole Matson, Ph.D., and brought its box office manager back on board. "The journey has been painful but purifying," says founder and Executive-Artistic Director, Jeremy Stanbary.

The season begins with grand opening celebrations for the Twin Cities regional premiere of Keith Bunin's The World Over on February 13th and 14th. The World Over, a tale of adventure, love, loss and redemption, draws on a vast array of influences--from the Bible, to The Odyssey, to Shakespeare--to masterfully speak to the original beauty and goodness of the human person. At once wholly fantastical and profoundly truthful, The World Over never leaves us without humor or hope in this epic story of a man in search of his home.

Open Window founder and Executive-Artistic Director Jeremy Stanbary will direct the play, which features eight actors playing over 40 roles. The production features Andrew Hey*, Abby Day, Elizabeth Efteland, Dawson D. Ehlke, Grant Hooyer, Erika Kuhn, Randy Schmeling*, and Tucker Brewster Schuster. The design team includes Sarah Pierucki (set design), Emmet Kowler (lighting/projection design), Nate Farley (costumes & prop design), Corey Mills (choreography), and Mike Anderson (fight choreography). The production runs February 13th - March 15th, 2020, with shows on Wednesday at 10:30am (except for Ash Wednesday, February 26th), Thursday-Saturday at 7:30pm, and Saturday-Sunday at 2:00pm. Tickets are $18-$32 and can be purchased at openwindowtheatre.org or by calling the box office Tuesday-Friday from 1:00-5:00pm at 612-615-1515. Discounted rates are available for groups of 10+.

The Redemption Season continues with the U.S. premiere of Ron Reed's Tolkien, directed by Joy Donley and running April 17th - May 17th, 2020. The worlds of Middle-earth and Narnia may never have come to be were it not for the deep and complex friendship between J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. This new play brings us into the world of two great writers, whose ambitions and talents spurred each other to greatness, but also tested the limits of their fellowship. $50 season tickets are available at openwindowtheatre.org or 612-615-1515.

Open Window will also be inaugurating the new monthly ANIMA Cultural Series, including concerts by Mike Mangione and Eric Genuis; talks and audience conversations with writers Alexi Sargeant, Dr. Holly Ordway, and Tolkien playwright Ron Reed; a game night with Cloven Pine Games; and the Redemption Film Festival and Open Window New Play Festival. The full schedule of events is available at openwindowtheatre.org.

Open Window Theatre is a multigenerational non-profit professional theatre focused on bringing stories with a redemptive vision to the Twin Cities. Founded in 2011, Open Window produced 19 mainstage productions and 6 summer children's productions over 5 seasons, before taking a hiatus in 2016 due to a dispute over its Minneapolis space. Twin Cities Arts Reader columnist Bev Wolfe named Open Window's last production, Everyman, as one of the Twin Cities' "10 Best Plays and Musicals of 2016," and hoped that "Open Window will resume these daring productions in the near future."

For more information, visit openwindowtheatre.org, email freshair@openwindowtheatre.org, or call 612-615-1515.

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