Hot, Hip and on the Verge

A dozen young American companies you need to know

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BEDLAM THEATRE
One Brain at a Time
by Lisa D'Amour

In the midst of the Twin Cities' well-funded theatre scene, which prides itself on pristine productions that rise up gracefully on the other side of the fourth wall, Bedlam Theatre prefers to be howling in your lap. Founded by a quartet of students from Macalester College, this live-wired company produces experimental political theatre fueled by spectacle and glee. In 2002, it hijacked the traditional form of a history pageant to create To Shining Sea, compressing 500 years of American imperialism into a clean 90 minutes. Bedlam's radical hijinks are a tool for disseminating provocative ideas about community, democracy and the power of the individual.

It all happens in the Bedlam Studio, the company's self-proclaimed "factory of the imagination," a home for invention and construction, activist and performance workshops and late-night extravaganzas, such as the "Bedlam ROMPS." These interactive, no-holds-barred cabarets inspire audiences to don cowboy boots and pigtails for a "hoedown romp" or bring their own fake blood to add verisimilitude to a "horror romp." Bedlam's core group—playwright/designer John Francis Bueche, puppeteer/performer Julian McFaul, director/performer Maren Ward, puppeteer/director Sarah Garner—are often invited to collaborate with other companies, and they anchor an extended family of 12–50 artists who rotate in and out of every show.

In 2003, Bedlam initiated a festival of 10-minute plays designed to inspire volunteers and supporters to write, act and direct. Working within the world of Bedlam, these novices know that anything is possible. Bedlam's locally legendary Terminus (adapted by Bueche and McFaul from the Stanislaw Lem sci-fi classic) told the story of a humanized robot harboring the residual trauma from a forgotten spaceship disaster. Bedlam literally surrounded the audience with this existential adventure by placing them inside the hull of a spaceship built in the studio—at blastoff, the set began to rotate around the audience on dozens of five-dollar castors, powered by stagehands on the outside of the ship.

"Julian and I were bouncing off the walls—we had to flee the coffee shop—when we came up with the idea of the spinning spaceship. From then on, our goal was to try and get the audience half as excited as we were," says Bueche. Next up: a theatrical documentary that chronicles the history of radicalism in Bedlam's West Bank neighborhood, a haven for intellectuals, anarchists, punk rockers and immigrants. Here in the polite, sprawling landscape of the wholesome Midwest, these manic theatre-philosophers have found the perfect home.

Playwright Lisa D'Amour is the author of Anna Bella Eema, 16 Spells to Charm the Beast, Red Death, Slabber and the Obie-winning Nita & Zita.

Next: Black Dahlia, Los Angeles

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