“Once you have perceived that life is very cruel, the only response is to live with as much humanity, humour and freedom as you can.”

Sarah Kane 

Mission Statement

Magpie Menagerie Players creates confrontational performance art that challenges socio/political inequalities by presenting vulnerability through a queer, eclectic, alternative, and evolving lens.

About us

Magpie Menagerie Players (MMP) is a queer performance artist collective founded with aspirations of producing alternative, raw, and confrontational performance art that challenges audiences and artists alike to honestly confront their realities and heal generational traumas. Inspired by Agusto Boal’s ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’, Bertolt Brecht’s ‘Epic Theatre’, and the British ‘in-yer-face’ theatre movement of the 90's, we create work that shows rather than tells, screams rather than whispers, and exposes rather than conceals. Taking influences from radical trans activists of color, drag, BDSM, kink, Shibari, punk culture, and horror films, we seek to create shocking, thought provoking, and vulnerable performance experiences. We seek to evolve, grow, and learn with the communities we are surrounded by and a part of, creating space and opportunities for emerging alternative queer, trans, BIPOC, disabled, and otherwise marginalized artists.

Land Acknowledgement

MMP stands on Wahpekute and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ lands, stolen and still held hostage by the colonizing and capitalistic US government that commits acts of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced removal against Wahpekute and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ and all First Nations peoples across the country to this day.

The land’s original stewards spoke Santee, and their descendants today speak Dakota and Lakota. These descendants are amongst the true stewards of Turtle Island. Cession 289 promised the release of these lands in 1838, and that promise has not been fulfilled.