Red Earth Theatre

Red Earth Theatre provides a platform to inspire and nurture many voices through live performance, and encourages dialogue exploring the human experience in our diverse communities. Based in Northern Arizona, the Verde Valley-Cottonwood-Sedona region, RET brings community together to create opportunity for all to experience the making and sharing of story .

Red Earth Theatre (RET) is a platform to inspire many voices through live performance, and encourage dialogue exploring the human experience in our diverse communities. A small primarily volunteer theatre company founded in 2013, Red Earth provides opportunity to the Verde Valley community and beyond to participate in and attend live performance.

Over 10 years Red Earth produced 17 full length productions (9 original works), 19 other forms (readings, ones-acts by new writers, themed 'collage' shows with music, poetry, prose and theatrical scenes) and 17 monthly shows produced live at Tlaquepaque.

RET created 'The Mouth Project' a live show that toured, was filmed, premiered at the Mary Fisher Theatre and is available online.

A nomadic group, RET has worked with 9 different partners, in many locations often creating theatre spaces where none existed. From the Sedona Recycle Center and Indian Gardens in Oak Creek Canyon to the Sedona Arts Center and Old Town Center for the Arts in Cottonwood, RET has created performances of all kinds with over 200 individuals of all ages and levels of experience.

During the covid years RET produced 9 'zoom' play readings, 6 outdoor/streamed site-specific shows and 4 livestreamed pre-recorded shows.

Red Earth collaborates to provide writing and storytelling opportunities for mental health and wellbeing. RET has worked with Mental Health Coalition Verde Valley on annual storytelling projects as well as the Prescott VA for many years, most recently in 2022.

In 2019 Red Earth Theatre produced Tom Stoppards play Darkside and Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, the 9 one-night only performances at Tlaquepaque, along with the 2 shows at the Mary Fisher Theatre - Our Stories Ourselves (with MHCVV) and Little Black Dress. We worked with over 40 actors and performers, produced the work of 16 new writers and reached over 1,000 audience members.

On an annual basis Red Earth produces two full productions (one in Sedona and one in Cottonwood), 9 monthly shows at Tlaquepaque, and partners with The Mental Health Coalition Verde Valley for a writing/performance project.

In 2020 with grant from the Northern Arizona Healthcare Foundation we were able to offer 42 weeks of programing to the VA culminating in 2 videos of veterans stories online (links at www.redearththeatre.org)

In September 2021 we produced a remount of the 2015 original show Pink Nectar Cafe (some of author Jim Bishop's short stories on stage) and in 2022 an 8 actor adaption 'Cyrano de Bergerac' outdoors at Tlaquepaque.

Testimonials

From The Local Community:
• Red Earth Theatre has given me a place where I can play, create, find community and feel alive!

• Sitting outside watching live theatre on a warm summer eve! How lucky we are to have this company here.

• Red Earth helped keep our theatre community together during the pandemic with so much online and even some live-on-site streaming shows. Grateful for their creativity, hard work and passion for theatre.

Why Live Theatre? Quotes from World Theatre Day 2018
• Ram Gopal Bajaj, India - Theatre director, theatre and film actor, academician, former director of the National School of Drama, Delhi.
The very earth itself will not survive if the collective joy of live theatre arts and knowledge (including technology) is not emancipated, re-sublimated from the mundane, the fury, the greed and the evil. I hail theatre and appeal to the world to implement and facilitate this at grass root level, rural and urban all. 'Limbs, Lingua and Compassion together in Education for the Generations'.