Producing Artistic Director 
joel.sass@openeyetheatre.org

Joel Sass serves as Open Eye Theatre's Producing Artistic Director, after having first joined the company as Associate Producer in 2017. He has been based in the Twin Cities since 1991, working as a producer, stage director, designer and adapter, specializing in the creation of new multi-disciplinary work for the stage and devising imaginative reinterpretations of classic texts. Learn more about Joel.

Puppet Lab Co-Artistic Director
oanh.vu@openeyetheatre.org

Oanh is an artist and educator who first encountered puppetry through Monkeybear's Harmolodic Workshop’s puppetry intensive and mentorship program. Since then, puppetry has become her passion as I’ve transitioned into a career as a puppeteer. Oanh has trained with master puppeteers through the Chicago Puppet Festival,Tom Lee, Rough House Puppets, the O'Neill National Puppetry Conference and Manual Cinema. Locally, Oanh has created and collaborated on a wealth of new puppet works that have been shown across the Twin Cities. As an educator, Oanh has worked for 13 years with the Science Museum of Minnesota.

Puppet Lab Co-Artistic Director
sofia.padilla@openeyetheatre.org

Sofia Padilla is a Mexican Theater Artist, Director, Designer and Puppeteer who has participated in over forty national and international theater productions. For television, she was the First Assistant Director of Sesame Street in Mexico City for the 2016 season “Listos a Jugar”. Currently, she works as a touring member of Bread and Puppet Theater and as the Artistic Co-Director of Paradox Teatro, which she founded in 2017 with Davey T Steinman. Paradox Teatro has received three grants from "The Jim Henson Foundation" to develop two different projects: "Migraciones / Migrations" (2019 Production Grant) and “Speechless / Sin Palabras" (2021 Workshop Grant and 2023 Production Grant).

Patron Services Manager
viva.graff@openeyetheatre.org

Viva Graff joins our team as our new Patron Services Manager! Viva is a musician, director, educator, and arts administrator originally from Winona, MN. She currently resides in St. Paul and works with many theatres in the area, including the Guthrie, Hennepin Arts, the Children's Theatre Company, and Park Square Theatre. She is also the Music Director for DeLaSalle High School theatre productions. In the past, she has worked as the Company Manager for the Great River Shakespeare Festival, Arts Administrator for the Winona Symphony Orchestra, and Music Director at Winona State University.

Marketing & PR Manager
amy.danielson@openeyetheatre.org

Amy has a background in supporting the arts, nonprofits, education, museums, and social services organizations. She is a marketing and communications consultant, focused on working with small nonprofits. She’s been a long-time fan of Open Eye since she went to her first show in the early 2000s. Amy loves traveling to new places as much as possible, baking, cooking, supporting local theater and music, and enjoying the outdoors.

Production Manager
ches.cipriano@openeyetheatre.org

Ches is a Filipino, Queer, first-generation American based in Minneapolis. They operate as a community cultivator, producer/organizer, radical joy seeker and mixed-media collaborator. Their artistic practice is rooted in puppetry, animation, printmaking, and tickling curiosities. They treasure community-based art, and you can often catch them as the loudest laugher in an audience. Since 2017, they have shared their work on- and off- stage at venues as small as Adventures in Cardboard MN and as large as the National Puppet Slam and Dragon Con in Atlanta, and with theater and opera companies throughout Minnesota. Though they are often in various tech booths in the Twin Cities, you can also find them as one of the Producers of the Puppet Union’s “OHNO Shows,” and of the Art Shanty Projects, a festival held on a frozen lake in the winter.

Creative Technical Director
techdirector@openeyetheatre.org

Brandon received a B.A. in Radio/TV/Film from Cal State Fullerton before moving to MPLS. He has been working in and around Open Eye Theatre since 2008 and as Technical Director since 2016, constructing sets and props, rigging special effects, running sound and lights, and stage managing. He has built sets for the Learning Fairy 1 & 2, Nothing is Something, The Red Shoes (2017 & 2021), The Beldenville Troll, Constance in the Darkness, The Longest Night, and Bug Girl and Order of Wolf on The Bakken Museum's rooftop. He has provided technical support for Toy Theater After Dark, Fusebox, Sweet Songs and Flying Objects, and many other rentals and guest artists. Outside of Open Eye, he has worked with Mixed Blood Theatre Company, The Ritz Theater, New Native Theatre, Circus Juventas, BareBones Puppets Performers, Full Moon Puppet Show, and Southside Battletrain Projects. In addition to theatre, he enjoys the outdoors, seasonal harvests, and gardening.