The Walker’s annual experimental theater series Out There returns to the McGuire Theater this January and February. For over three decades, Out There has surveyed leading theater and performance makers from around the world who approach the art form of theater in fresh and new ways. This year’s roster of performances features works by Forced Entertainment, Edgar Arceneaux, Jaha Koo, and Autumn Knight. Collectively, they examine new ways to tell stories and reimagine theater.
The carefully curated group of global projects brings a diverse spectrum of live art experiences to the Walker over the two-month program. The UK’s Forced Entertainment offers a minimalist spoken tale of loss, failure, and heartbreak, while LA visual artist Edgar Arceneaux presents a multi-layered work examining cultural appropriation, family drama, and dementia told through kitchen-sink drama. In February, Jaha Koo performs a solo monologue with video and talking rice cookers that links the personal with the geo-political and Autumn Knight’s genre-bending live art-cinema Walker commission premieres from the McGuire Theater.
Learn more about the history of Out There at the Walker in the new Walker Reader interview with the curator.
Detailed program information follows.
Out There 2025: The Future of Theater, Today
January 9–February 22, 2025
McGuire Theater
Forced Entertainment: Exquisite Pain
Thursday–Saturday, January 9–11, 7:30 pm
McGuire Theater
Tickets start at $15, fees included
“A show that prods at what it means to be human.” —The Guardian
A red telephone on a hotel bed. A subway station. A green Mercedes. These vivid images, both ordinary and not, become emblems of heartbreak. In this production from the experimental theater company Forced Entertainment, a man and a woman tell and retell stories, unwittingly finding new ways to remember and forget what really happened. Based on a project by the French conceptual artist Sophie Calle, Exquisite Pain is about love, loss, and the tales we tell ourselves when things go wrong.
Exquisite Pain is a related event for the Walker exhibition Sophie Calle: Overshare (October 26, 2024–January 26, 2025).
Program support provided by Nor Hall and Roger Hale.
Edgar Arceneaux: Boney Manilli
Thursday–Saturday, January 23–25, 7:30 pm
McGuire Theater
Tickets start at $15, fees included
“Mixes pop music, a burial ceremony, and great dance performances … a reflection on the impossible truth that artists are seeking.” –PARIS LA
Featuring original music and puppetry, this surreal dark comedy from interdisciplinary artist Edgar Arceneaux considers family trauma and histories of racial appropriation. The story centers around Sunny, a troubled playwright who struggles to finish his script about the infamous pop duo Milli Vanilli while coping with his mother’s declining memory. Meanwhile, his brother wrestles with his own adaptation of the controversial Disney film Song of the South. Each performance opens with a disco and 1990s-themed karaoke party in the Walker’s Cityview Bar.
Jaha Koo: Cuckoo
Thursday–Saturday, February 6–8, 7:30 pm
McGuire Theater
Tickets start at $15, fees included
“Cuckoo feels like a peculiar kind of dream, a communication from your subconscious, offering some truth you’ll never be able to translate into words.” —Exeunt Magazine
Three intrepid—and talkative—robotic rice cookers join forces with Jaha Koo, a celebrated playwright and charismatic performer, to paint an incisive portrait of Koo’s native South Korea. Following a major economic crisis in 1997, the country has grappled with youth unemployment, inequality, and rising suicide rates. Koo bears witness to these crises in humorous but poignant dialogues with the machines, combining personal experience, politics, and reflections on happiness and mortality.
Program support provided by Leni and David Moore, Jr./The David and Leni Moore Family Foundation.
Autumn Knight: Autumn Knight Live at the Walker, 2025
Thursday–Saturday, February 20–22, 7:30 pm
Walker Cinema
Tickets start at $15, fees included
Walker Commission / World Premiere
Boundaries between screen and stage dissolve in this new work by New York–based artist Autumn Knight. Building on her experiments with streaming during the COVID-19 lockdown, Knight and her production crew will film, edit, and transmit a real-time performance from the Walker’s McGuire Theater to the Walker Cinema, calling into question the nature of “liveness.” Autumn Knight Live at the Walker, 2025 flows from Knight’s interdisciplinary performance practice, which strives to unsettle entrenched power dynamics and probe perceptions of race and gender.
Program support provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.
TICKETS
Ordering tickets is easy: visit walkerart.org/tickets or call 612.375.7600. Prices include all applicable fees. Box Office is open Wednesday–Sunday and one hour before performances.
ACCESSIBILITY
For more information about accessibility, visit our Access page.
For questions on accessibility or to request additional accommodations, call 612.375.7564 or email access@walkerart.org.
STUDENTS COME EARLY
Students own the rush line! Get in line an hour before showtime for $15 rush tickets. One ticket per person with student ID. (Some restrictions apply.)
GET TOGETHER
Experience these performances in a group of 10 or more people and save 15% on tickets. Purchase group tickets online, over the phone, or in person. The discount is automatically applied at checkout on orders of 10 or more tickets to the same performance.
MEMBERS DO MORE
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ABOUT THE WALKER ART CENTER
The Walker Art Center is a renowned multidisciplinary arts institution that presents, collects, and supports the creation of groundbreaking work across the visual and performing arts, moving image, and design. Guided by the belief that art has the power to bring joy and solace and the ability to unite people through dialogue and shared experiences, the Walker engages communities through a dynamic array of exhibitions, performances, events, and initiatives. Its multiacre campus includes 65,000 sq. ft. of exhibition space, the state-of-the-art McGuire Theater and Walker Cinema, and ample green space that connects with the adjoining Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The Garden, a partnership with the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board, is one of the first urban sculpture parks of its kind in the United States and home to the beloved Twin Cities landmark Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Recognized for its ambitious program and growing collection of more than 15,500 works, the Walker embraces emerging art forms and amplifies the work of artists from the Twin Cities and from across the country and the globe. Its broad spectrum of offerings makes it a lively and welcoming hub for artistic expression, creative innovation, and community connection.
Acknowledgments
The Walker Art Center’s Performing Arts programs are made possible by generous support from the Doris Duke Foundation through the Doris Duke Performing Arts Fund, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Producers Council
Performing Arts programs and commissions at the Walker are generously supported by members of the Producers Council: Christina Evans and Weston Hoard; Nor Hall and Roger Hale; Judith Brin Ingber and Jerome Ingber; Neal Jahren; King’s Fountain/Barbara Watson Pillsbury; Sarah Lutman and Rob Rudolph; Emily Maltz; Leni and David Moore, Jr./The David and Leni Moore Family Foundation; Therese Sexe and David Hage; and Mike and Elizabeth Sweeney.
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