MPLS Theatre Company Makes Long-Awaited Comeback

By: Feb. 14, 2019
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"How transitory we be all day." As these final lines of the 16th century play, Everyman, were uttered, director Jeremy Stanbary had no idea how prescient the words would be.

A mere two months later his theatre company, Open Window Theatre, residing in the North Loop for over five years, would become homeless. "We were in the midst of a big expansion project," Stanbary says, "creating space for our growing audiences." But a dispute with their landlords left the theatre company with no home.
After 2-½ years of litigation including a full jury trial last May, the case was finally resolved on mutually agreeable terms this past October. Now Stanbary and his wife, Sarah, along with their Board of Directors are dedicated to a complete restoration of Open Window.

Recently they held a sold-out fundraiser to launch a Kickstarter campaign. "We intend to make the theatre bigger, better and stronger than before," Stanbary told an audience of 250 people gathered in St. Paul last week. Stanbary was joined onstage by his board members and trial lawyers along with former Viking and emcee Matt Birk to make a plea to raise money for the resurrection of the theatre. "It's an all or nothing campaign," Stanbary stated matter-of-factly. If the theatre doesn't raise their monetary goal, then all of the money goes back to the donors. Board Chair Dr. Nes Rotstein explained, "This also means that our theatre will cease to exist."

Rotstein, chief strategy officer at Catholic Schools Center of Excellence, is featured in Open Window Theatre's Kickstarter video. In it he says, "There is an audience here in the Twin Cities that is looking for beauty, goodness and truth in the arts and they are underserved and sometimes even ignored." Bev Wolfe, writer for the Twin Cities Arts Reader, named Open Window's Everyman as one of her top ten best plays of 2016 and said, "Hopefully, Open Window will resume these daring productions in the near future."

The goal for the Kickstarter campaign is $100,000 and must be raised by March 11th. This represents nearly half of their overall $250,000 "Redemption 2019" fundraising campaign. As of this writing, over $51,000 has been raised on Kickstarter, and another $108,000 has been raised or pledged offline. The Kickstarter video, filmed by Brontide Labs in association with W2Films, can be found at https://www.kickstarter.com



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