By HARVEY WINJE

HOBT has occupied four locations that served as indoor workshops, classrooms, performance stages, and offices while always doing production, teaching, and performing at other indoor and outdoor places. These spaces included parks, schools, theaters, community centers, and streets throughout the Twin Cities area and suburbs.

Other traveling adventures took HOBT to Washington, D.C.; New Orleans, LA; Brookings and Mitchell, SD; Itasca, MN and to the Gulf of Mexico on a Mississippi river towns tour with ”Circle of Water Circus” (currently exhibited at the Hennepin History Museum). In 2000, HOBT performed at the DMZ–Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.

HOBT has been a place that welcomes everyone no matter where it’s taught, performed, or at any one of its four studio/workshop/stage locations:
1973-1985: Walker Community Church 3104 16th Avenue So; demolished after May 27, 2012 fire and then a new Church was built.
1985-1986: Gustavus Adolphus Lodge Hall retail space at 1626 East Lake Street; demolished August 11th 2009 after January 16, 2004 fire with a new apartment building built on lot in the last two years.
1986-1988 Roberts Shoe Store third floor; demolished after a fire on Memorial Day weekend 2018 and currently a vacant lot being planned and developed by the Graves Foundation.
1988-Today: Avalon Theater 1500 East Lake Street.; 1937 Art Deco and Neon Marquee and interior fixtures by Perry Crosier, Architect, famous for theater designs in the Midwest.

Previously, that corner was the Royal Theatre – a wooden structure of 300 seats built & opened in 1909. In 1913 it was renamed Seventh Ward Theatre; it was destroyed by fire on January 25, 1924. The Rosebud Theatre was built on the site, opening on April 12, 1924, until 1928. Between 1928 and 1930 it was closed, then reopened as the Reno Theatre when it was equipped with sound and was renamed Avalon Theatre – from Knights of the Round Table- A Place of Magic. It was demolished and a newer theatre, 850-1,000-seat Avalon Theatre, was built on the site in 1937. Crosier noted on drawings that some architectural features from the previous Theater were to be saved and reused. The structural iron for the new Avalon came from Minneapolis Steel and Machinery Company; ten blocks east on Lake Street & Hiawatha where Target is now.

During HOBT’s 1988 renovation, two neighbors stopped by one day saying they used to peek through the old wooden theater walls at movies when they were young. One of them lived in Powderhorn Park Neighborhood, then, and the other in Phillips. They married soon after those days of looking in the “peep holes” of the wooden walls on the days they couldn’t afford the 5 cent admission. Undoubtedly, they saw newsreels, cartoons, westerns, and romantic movies.

By design, HOTB has had a physical presence at hundreds of residencies, workshops, performances, and parades away from these four street addresses over the years.

In 1973, there were two and it multiplied.
Two performers in large puppets on the Powderhorn Park Stage on July 4th, 1973 were joined by another person soon after and were invited to have a workspace in the basement of Walker Community Church and began producing puppets, masks, dramatic scripts for performances and demonstrations in a wide variety of venues.

First MayDay Festival
In spring of 1975, the young theatre troupe joined with people from An Almond Tree Household, New American Movement, and the Street Artist Guild to fashion the first of many MayDay Festivals with Parade and Pageant. Since then, there have been many collaborations with schools, small towns,and other arts organizations including the Minnesota Orchestra.

On Valentine’s Day February 14, 1979, Powderhorn Puppet Theatre became In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre.
“As the theatre expanded its scope from the specific Powderhorn Neighborhood, the Theatre changed its name to In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre. The name change marked a point when the group began to define itself as a guild of artists.” …from 25th Anniversary book, Theatre of Wonder: 25 Years In the Heart of the Beast, University of Minnesota Press in cooperation with the Frederick Weisman Museum, 1999.

Related Images: