Pillsbury House Theatre’s (PH+T) mission is to co-create enduring change through a just society through arts. PH+T imagines thriving communities where creativity is the catalyst for building personal, social, and economic power for all.

Pillsbury House Theatre is Black-founded and led and is an integral part of Pillsbury United Communities (PUC), a 145-year-old, Black-led community organization working towards a vision of thriving communities where every person has personal, social, and economic power. In the early 1990s, an enterprising artist, Ralph Remington, transformed a historic 96-seat theatre within PUC into a professional theater, and in 2009—under Co-Directors Faye M. Price and Noël Raymond—Pillsbury House Theatre became a professional arts/human service hybrid rebranded Pillsbury House + Theatre: a center for creativity and community. Currently led by Senior Artistic Producing Director Signe V. Harriday and Director of Arts and Culture Noël Raymond, PH+T’s Mainstage Season consists of three productions per year with a focus on high-quality, contemporary scripts that confront diverse issues in an urban context, as well as two weekends of performance by early career performance artists who have completed the Naked Stages Fellowship. PH+T also runs innovative and award-winning community engagement programs, including Breaking Ice and the Chicago Avenue Project. 

Jerome Foundation supports Pillsbury House + Theatre’s Naked Stages, New Works, and Maker Series programs. Supporting three early career Minnesota-based performance artists, Naked Stages is a 7–9 month fellowship led by Masa Kawahara that provides financial support, mentorship, cohort works-in-progress sharing sessions, workshops led by local artists identified by fellows, and a performance of a fully produced solo piece at PH+T. PH+T has been committed to identifying and supporting early career playwrights since their founding; PH+T’s new play development dedicates support and resources to early career playwrights over several years, culminating in a full production of a new play as part of the Mainstage Season. Created to fill a gap in support for artists due to recent arts organization closures in the Twin Cities and to address ongoing disparities in the ecosystem, the Maker Series engages artists/artist teams in monthlong residencies to create whatever they wish with the full support of PH+T staff and facilities.