Walking Shadow Theatre’s 2025 Season: Witches, Trials and Escape Rooms

Walking Shadow Theatre has long been one of this writer’s favorite theater companies in the metro area. Walking Shadow showcases earnest, thoughtful and innovative pieces of work, often choosing pieces that have something to say (or ask) about the world we live in. Walking Shadow’s 2025 season promises yet another year of compelling storytelling. One of its founders and current Artistic Director, John Heimbuch, was kind enough to walk me through their upcoming shows: “Witch,” “Mae West and the Trial of Sex,” and “Zerolands.”

Witch
Mar 22 to Apr 13 at Open Eye Theatre

“Witch,” by Jen Silverman, will be co-directed by Cody R. Braudt and Amy Rummenie. In this Jacobean drama, a quaint village is upended when the devil comes to visit, offering to grant villagers’ wishes if they can pay his price: their souls. Protagonist Elizabeth seems like the ideal candidate for this bargain, considering she has been decried as a witch and cast out of the village, but the truth is not so simple and her soul is not so cheap.

“It’s a super fun script,” Heimbuch says. “An absolute romp! But the show’s humor has a real edge to it, a deep societal anger that I think will really resonate with people in 2025. It was written in the aftermath of the 2016 election, and it certainly doesn’t offer any easy answers to society’s systemic issues. What it does very effectively is to use dark humor to address the overwhelming frustration we all feel at the mundane awfulness of the world, and allow the possibility that maybe, just maybe, another way is possible.”

Although not explicitly queer, there are elements of the play that will appeal to an LGTBQ+ audience.

“I think Silverman’s perspective on gender comes through in the play,” Heimbuch says, referring to Silverman being non-binary. “By having the devil offer people their heart’s desire in an over-the-top old-world setting, Silverman uses humor to explore the damaging impact of letting societal expectations shape people’s identities, whether that’s telling us who we’re allowed to love, who deserves success, what you’re allowed to want and who is allowed to take it.”

Mae West and the Trial of Sex
May 31 to June 22 at Crane Theater

“Mae West and the Trial of Sex” is written by Heimbuch himself and will be directed by Allison Vincent. This play is an exploration of actual historical events, centered around the ineffable Mae West and one of the more fraught chapters in her life.

“Mae West was a force of nature!” Heimbuch explains. “She rose through vaudeville as a dancer and blues singer, became a scandalous Broadway actress and playwright, and then went on to be one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the 1930s.”

Heimbuch’s piece promises to be an interesting slice of the gay experience at an incredibly different point in time in American history.

“When I first read Mae West’s queer-themed 1927 play ‘The Drag,’ I was surprised by how directly it treated gay life almost a century ago,” Heimbuch says. “It had campy queens throwing shade, using queer slang, plus a large-scale drag ball, with an underlying message of empathy and understanding. How had I never heard of it before?”

Heimbuch was especially drawn to a specific chapter in West’s life: “I learned that ‘The Drag’ was the target of a nationwide censorship campaign that resulted in Mae West being arrested, tried, and jailed for her play ‘Sex,’ which was then in its tenth month on Broadway,” Heimbuch says. “As I dug into historical archives and old newspapers, attempting to piece together the full scope of these events, I found that the censorship laws that were put in place to prevent shows like ‘Sex’ and ‘The Drag’ from reaching Broadway had prohibited queer representation onstage for the next 40 years, and I knew this story needed to be told.”

Zerolands
TBD – Check Walking Shadow’s website for up-to-date information.

“Zerolands” is a new play by Liz Hara, John Heimbuch and David Pisa. This new work is part play and part escape room, which is a kind of storytelling that Walking Shadow has dabbled in before. This whimsical piece draws on science fiction elements and invites direct engagement from the audience.

As mentioned, this is not Walking Shadow’s first foray into interactive plays.

“We did two different plays with puzzles from 2019 to 2023!” Heimbuch says. “One was the in-person, immersive hands-on show ‘Cabal,’ in which the participants were initiates to a magical secret society facing a leadership crisis; and the other was the online zoom-based interactive ‘Reboot,’ in which the participants were a team of elite hackers who gain access to an abandoned government research facility.”

“Zerolands” is Walking Shadow’s most recent play of this type.

“In ‘Zerolands,’ the participants will be students taking a course on children’s literature featuring a journey into another dimension,” Heimbuch says. “The story unfolds through a combination of scenes with live performers, and the audience’s participation in various hands-on puzzles and interactive environments.”

Walking Shadow keeps coming back to this unique kind of storytelling for a reason.

“All live theatre is participatory on some level, because it fundamentally unfolds in real-time, at a shared location between the actors and the audience,” Heimbuch muses. “But at most shows, the audience’s role is rather passive … By shifting the audience’s engagement to include hands-on puzzles, immersive environments and some character interactions, it can increase their engagement with the experience. This allows us to engage different parts of the imagination than a traditional play does, and lets audiences feel invested in the story in a more personal way.”

Beyond Audience Participation

Walking Shadow is a small theater company and welcomes participation from the community — even beyond the active audience participation of its escape room plays. If you enjoy their work as much as I do, there are opportunities for both skilled and unskilled volunteer positions that you can find out about by contacting them through their info email.

“We’re frequently looking for enthusiastic board members who are interested in supporting our theatrical work,” Heimbuch says.

Audition opportunities can be found on Minnesota Playlist and their website, listed below.

walkingshadow.org