Works-in-Progress RFP is OPEN!

Key Dates:

Sunday, October 12, 1-3 pm: Information session, in person at Red Eye

Sunday, October 19, 11:59 pm: Applications due

November-May 2026: Program period

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: WORKS-IN-PROGRESS 2026!

Works-in-Progress is a cohort-based container for creative process, peer exchange, and public sharing of live performance work. Each year, Red Eye assembles artists who wish to engage in dialogue around their creative process. These artists form a temporary community of practice with varied backgrounds, aesthetics, and approaches to performance, united by shared commitment to questioning artistic form and challenging dominant culture.

This cohort is intentionally composed to strengthen community relationships, bringing together artists with balanced perspectives and shared, parallel, or adjacent interests. Process is non-linear and takes many shapes—"work-in-progress" means different things to different artists. The program invites artists to hold their process open and experiment with public sharing.

This might look like a sketch toward a larger project, a format for sharing ongoing practice, compositional experiments, practical visioning around particular concepts, workshopping segments of larger works—anything except fully contained, completed, or produced pieces.

Participants receive modest technical, production, and marketing support, plus access to rehearsal space as available. Cohort members meet periodically for showings, exchange, cohort engagement and feedback where each artist shares material and participates in sharing protocols developed over Red Eye's history. The program involves critical reflection on both making and how we talk about making.

Each artist presents 10-15 minutes during a shared evening in the first weekend of the Red Eye Festival. Works-in-Progress. Works-in-Progress has been part of Red Eye's programming since 1983, forming a recognizable feature of the Twin Cities performance landscape. Many alumni serve as key makers in the community.

Since 2025, a collective of producers - Festival Producers - have been involved in stewarding the program and locating it deeper in community. This creates more perspectives, mentorship, co-learning and support within the structure. Festival Producers have responsibilities ranging from scheduling, running cohort meetings, coordination, box office, marketing, and relationship building. This year, Festival Producers are Lelis Brito, Rebekah Chrisante De Ybarra and Marcela Michelle. All three are MN community leaders and are alumni of the program.

Please Apply! Please also spread the word to artists in your network, in the field of performance, particularly multi-disciplinary, disabled, BIPOC, Queer, Trans identified artists who are currently engaged in a creative process and are seeking a supportive cohort and community for their performance work! Participants must be able to attend all cohort meeting dates and times.

Announcing Fall 2025 Red Eye Curated Rental Performances!

Red Eye's CURATED RENTAL program offers artists who are aligned with Red Eye's mission and community, space and resources to self-produce their performance work. All rentals to individual, self producing artists receive a subsidized rate, with additional discounts for Red Eye program alums and residents of the Seward neighborhood.

Red Eye consistently cultivates capital resources for our community of artists. This year, enhancements include new LED lighting and the inclusion of projection equipment as part of the program.

We are proud to announce projects by José A. Luis. Felicia Cooper, Emily Michaels King, Katie Kaufmann, MK Tuomanen and jess pretty this fall!