GUEST ARTIST SERIES: Puppetry / Theatre / Music
Open Eye Theatre presents a Bart Buch production
ODE TO WALT WHITMAN
May 29 – June 8, 2025
Created & Performed by Bart Buch
Bart Buch’s acclaimed ODE TO WALT WHITMAN is a tender, silent puppet poem that uncovers a dialogue between Walt Whitman and Federico Garcia Lorca. Within the context of an online gay chat room, their poetic dialogue contrasts Whitman’s America, a nation full of lovers and comrades, with what Garcia Lorca sees, an America inundated with machines and tears.
About Our Guest Artist Series
In addition to our MainStage productions, Open Eye is deeply committed to curating and presenting a dynamic Guest Artist Series that highlights emerging local artists and innovative performing ensembles who tell stories in ways that are fresh, fun, and experimental.
A surreal puppet poem to Whitman and Lorca
Hand puppets, a butterfly marionette, masks, grass bunraku puppets, toy theater, shadows and video projections depict Whitman and Garcia Lorca chased through a surreal and tragic landscape. Live organic electronica composed by Martin Dosh accompanies the scene.
This intricate work reveals and updates conversations between Whitman and Garcia Lorca, extending their metaphors into the postmodern gay world. This puppet ode hearkens for a remembrance and realization of Whitman’s love and Whitman’s dreams of America.
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TICKETS
$30 — General Admission
$25 — Fringe Button Holders
$24 — Seniors
$18 — Students
$15 — Economic AccessibilityA limited number of $15 Economic Accessibility tickets are available online for all performances. If not sold out, a limited number of pay-as-able tickets will be available at the door. View our ticketing policy.
Do you have a MN Fringe button? Get $5 off General Admission tickets with discount code FRINGE. Show your button at the box office when checking in.
AGE RECOMMENDATION: Ages 14 and up.
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PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE
Thursday 5/29, 7:00pm
Friday 5/30, 7:00pm
Saturday 5/31, 7:00pm
Sunday, 6/1, 2:00pm*
Thursday 6/5, 7:00pm
Friday 6/6, 7:00pm
Saturday 6/7, 7:00pm
Sunday, 6/8, 2:00pmPlease note: Evening performances are at 7:00pm and not our usual 7:30pm start time.
*Masks will be required for this performance.
RUN TIME: 70 minutes with no intermission
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ACCESSIBILITY
Contact us at 612-874-6338 or boxoffice@openeyetheatre.org for accessibility information and requests. Learn more.
COVID PRECAUTIONS: Masks will be required for the Sunday, June 1 performance.
Creative Team
Bart Buch, Ramon Cordes, Seth Eberle, Masanari Kawahara – Performers/Puppeteers
George Meyer – Lighting Design
Duane Tougas and Bart Buch – Set Design and Construction
In 2009, Ode to Walt Whitman was performed at Here Arts Center, curated by Basil Twist, in New York City to sold out shows, earning an illustration in The New Yorker and high praise from the Jim Henson Foundation.
Some important responses to this work: While performing at Here Arts Center in NYC in 2009, Jane Henson, the wife of Jim Henson came to Ode to Walt Whitman twice. When asked “Why did you see it twice?” she responded, “The show is a good poem and good poems need to be read twice.” In 2006, Quinton Skinner of City Pages wrote this about the performance, “By the time it was over, a fully realized vision had emerged combining poetic sadness with a cosmic smile that even old corduroy-clad-Walt would have endorsed.”
Bart Buch's Ode to Walt Whitman has the great gay American poet meeting Federico Garcia Lorca (his Spanish counterpart) online in a gay chat room and having a string of surreal adventures.
