Red Eye presents the 2026 edition of the Red Eye Festival, formerly known as the New Works 4 Weeks Festival: an annual gathering for live performance works that respond to the current moment and imagine collective transformation. Each year, artist cohorts engage in peer exchange, mutual support, and dialogue around creative process that culminates in this public sharing. Over nearly four decades, this incubator of new work has become a cornerstone of the Twin Cities performance landscape.
The 2026 artists bring varied approaches to performance processes—calling on dance, installation, sound, storytelling, textile, devising, satire, meditation, personal narratives and more—with a shared commitment to questioning artistic form and challenging dominant culture. Their works traverse themes including community distress and bodily peace, global conflict, grounding, absurdity, grief, desire, threads and uprising. They explore these themes through dance, sound, assemblage, multimedia installation, celebration and satire.
DejaJoelle: Spiritual Interlude
DejaJoelle is a Black Centered Healing Artist, Choreographer, Director, and Cultural Healing Curator. She believes Dance serves as our connection to ourselves, our communities, and our overall Divinity. DejaJoelle creates Sacred Black Space to discover ancestral/intuitive Rituals and Practices that move toward Healing using Dance, Body Reclamation, and Revolutionary Love Practices.
Kat Purcell: un//be//done
In collaboration with The People’s Closet and an ensemble of six players, not a fashion show, a bricolage of discards and further distressed, the deconstruction of categories for new assemblies, the questioning of garbage, and being okay with ends (of threads).
Kat Purcell is a nonbinary transexual performer, lighting designer, experimental producer, installation artist and anarchist pursuing the work of cultivating new/old formations of community inter-dependence alongside many incredible caregivers and culture bearers.
Thursday, May 28 at 7:00pm — requires masks and offers a discount to our Elders 70+
Friday, May 29 at 7:00pm — post-performance engagement, ASL interpretation
Saturday, May 30 at 7:00pm
Pay as you wish, suggested $18-80. If cost is a barrier, please email communications@redeyetheater.org for discount ticket options. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
Additional Accessibility Information: Red Eye’s space is fully wheelchair-accessible. Masks are highly encouraged. Some events require masking and masks will be available at the venue if you don’t bring your own. Please only attend if you are feeling well, and if not, we are happy to change your tickets to a different day at no charge.