MayDay: Collaborative Civic Celebration Art

Every year, beginning in February with community meetings, and culminating on the first Sunday in May, we wrestle with big issues and big ideas through community dialogue, art-making and play. Each year Mayday needs and invites many people to work together, crafting relationships that weave our community together in surreptitious ways.

Mayday has grown into an essential community ritual for holding pain and releasing possibility and pure joy. It sometimes demands deep Introspection and Silence, sometimes Big Ruckus. It is both difficult and really super fun!

The Pulse by Will Hommeyer thumb

MayDay Videos

Films exploring the first 42 years of In the Heart of the Beast Theatre’s Mayday Festival.

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The Themes of the 45 Years of MayDay!

Mayday is an Annual Festival generated and produced by In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre since 1974. It has been my rare privilege to midwife these many years of Mayday with such incredible teams of artists and community participants!

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MayDay 2007 by Eric Altenberg

MayDay 2007: Somos Agua / We Are Water

We pray for a foundation of reverence and gratitude for Water as we face the complex issues of Water at the core of many challenging environmental and human rights situations.

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MayDay 2006: The Time Is Now!

The Time is Now to come together for the Common Good! What is possible when we rise to the task of coming together – with the power of love—for the power of building the world we wish?

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MayDay 2005: Where Do We Go From Here?

The war in Iraq is raging. On the same day as Mayday here in Minneapolis, there was be a large protest in New York City calling for Disarmament. At the Community Brainstorm meeting, someone asks if the theme this year could be “about Disarmament”

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