Announcing the 2026 Red Eye Festival (!!!)

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.

RED EYE FESTIVAL SCHEDULE:

May 21-23, 2026:

WIP15 Edna Hand | Gayatri Narayan | Jarek Pastor | Rio Saul Garcia Ramirez

May 28-30, 2026:

WIP30 DejaJoelle | Kat Purcell

June 4-6, 2026:

WIP60 featuring Kenna Cottman

June 11-13, 2026:

WIP60 featuring Leila Awadalla

All performances run Thursday-Saturday, 7 pm.

Friday performances each week include a post-performance engagement.

Red Eye is an artist-led organization where we—artists, staff, and community—form a relational collective, stewarding our shared resources, relationships, and creative potential.