3 women in ill-fitting dark suits look at the camera, standing in front of two red-seated folding chairs

Making Monsters

As a part of Red Eye Theater's 2025 Isolated Acts program, this piece marks the beginning explorations of a question that has recently come violently into broader awareness through the grabbing of people off the street without warning by unidentified representatives of the state and sending them to foreign prisons: what constitutes a person’s humanity? From that arises other questions, including: how do we see other people, and how does that inform what we are authorized to do?

Making Monsters Cast

Akiko is a visual artist, performance artist, teaching artist, curator, and activist based in Minneapolis. A native of Osaka, Japan, her multidisciplinary storytelling practice centers voices too often marginalized by white Eurocentric society. She integrates poetry, music, dance, collage, and puppetry to reflect the times we live in and the power of community. As a teaching artist, Akiko works with youth to affirm the importance of their voices, using art as a vehicle for truth-telling and connection. She also curates events to uplift emerging artists and advocates for access to creative practices—such as poetry, puppetry, and collage—for all.

Erika Hansen is inspired by the unconventional. Erika has worked with Charles Campbell since 2018. In the Twin Cities she has performed in works by Angharad Davies, Laura Holway, Leslie O’Neill, Deborah Jinza Thayer|Movement Architecture, Sandy Silva, April Sellers and others. Throughout MN, she continues to perform in JG Everest’s Sound Gardens in parks, nature centers and once on the shore of Lake Superior. In addition to her performance career, Erika has worked in various roles as an arts administrator.

Megan Mayer is an award-winning artist who has worked in Minneapolis for 35+ years in choreography, dance, experimental video and photography. An occasional curator and educator, I have an appetite for patience and subtle shifts in the body. I am curious about the tension between onstage and offstage and how the body organizes around its nervous system. I've had the good fortune to perform in Charles Campbell's work since 2009. Prior to the current fascist devaluation of artists' worth, my work received support through two McKnight Foundation Fellowships in Choreography, numerous national and regional choreographic residencies including NCC (Akron, OH) and MANCC (Tallahassee, FL), grants from Jerome Foundation, MRAC and MSAB, various commissions and generous private philanthropists. www.meganmayer.com

Making Monsters Crew

Charles Campbell (Writer/Director)

 

 

 

Alice Endo/matt regan (Red Eye Ops)

Killer skills paired with deeply human compassion and whole project support make these able techs some of the best in the business. If you get a chance to work with them, jump on it.

Heidi Eckwall (lighting) is a lighting designer whose work in dance, theater and performance spans several decades. She has toured with Nora Chipaumire, Urban Bush Women, Rosy Simas, Emily Johnson, BodyCartography Project and Hijack, and she teaches Lighting Design at Colorado College.  Heidi has worked with Charles for years and years.

Mike Hallenbeck (sound) is a composer, sound editor, and rerecording mixer active in audio post for film, animation, advertising, corporate communications, performing arts, and multimedia. He welcomes the opportunity to share the excitement of audio that inspires and communicates. Hallenbeck is happy to work with Skewed Visions again, after debuting with the company as sound designer and composer for the 2019 performance installation Birds of the Future. His sound house Cool Cat Audio provided all the voiceover engineering, sound editing, custom music, and final mix for this podcast. Home page/contact: coolcataudio.com

This project was developed in part through Red Eye's New Works 4 Weeks.