The Bare Bones is celebrating 30 years of bringing meaningful, visual puppetry ritual to Halloween in the Twin Cities. I haven’t been going for 30 years but I started 10-15 years ago my kids were little.
Their mission is to bring art into community and community into art through movement, puppetry and spectacle performance, creative re-use, education, and collaboration. But, as an audience member, their strength is the beauty and magic of the performance. You’re never too old or too young to appreciate a giant dancing skeleton.
The production celebrates life and death and idea that Halloween is a time when the living and the dead hold space together, at least for a while. Every year there’s a song that remembers the dead where audience members can call out the names of loved ones who have died. There are songs and vignettes that feature dozens of volunteers dancing, fire dancing, playing music or managing large scale puppets. New this year was a media screen with shadow puppets used to share lyrics and add some structure to the movement on stage.
A couple years ago they moved from Hidden Falls in St Paul to the Greenway in Minneapolis. As much as it pains me to say it, it was a good move. We lose the spookiness of being in the woods but it’s more accessible and the stage is wider, so more people can have a front seat. It’s very family friendly, but cold. It’s just over an hour long. It often happens on the first cold days of the year, as if did last night. So remember, it’s much colder when you’re sitting for a couple hours. Wear warm boots, bring chairs and some folks bring picnic food. But cold be damned, it’s worth it!
The show is happening every night through Halloween at 7pm. You can order tickets in advance or show up. It doesn’t sell out but if you buy in advance, you get early entry.
Mostly Minnesota 