The Case for Support: Mixed Blood Theatre Produces Positive, Quantifiable Impact for the People of Minneapolis

There is a theater company sitting right in the heart of America that dedicates every activity, every program, and every human interaction to the notion of radical hospitality.

The idea of “radical hospitality” is not new.

The Torah: “The strangers who sojourn with you shall be to you as the natives among you, and you shall love them as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19: 33–34).

The New Testament: “What you do to the least of my brethren you do unto me” (Matthew 25:40).

The Quran: “Serve God… and do good to… orphans, those in need, neighbors who are near, neighbors who are strangers, the companion by your side, the wayfarer that you meet, and those who have nothing” (4:36).

The Hindu scripture Taittiriya Upanishad: “The guest is a representative of God.”

These are not extremist views. In fact, radical hospitality serves as a North Star to most nonprofit organizations whose purposes are about lifting those who need it.
In the world of nonprofit arts organizations, however, radical hospitality is difficult to find. Some use the phrase because their leaders (or often, one leader) may want to incorporate the most generous assistance possible, above and beyond the norm.

However, when some of these arts organizations come into contact with financial distress, the “luxury” of radical hospitality disappears for the perceived “nitty-gritty” of producing a subjective notion of excellence.

The best nonprofits work the other way around. Community impact is far more important than any structured program.

Welcome to the Mixed Blood Theatre Company.

The core of its mission — “Mixed Blood uses theater to disrupt injustice” – reveals its nature as a social justice organization that happens to use art as a tool, not as a product. This is exactly what all nonprofit arts organizations could do, but refuse due to some preconceived, unbacked notion that the production of art is the service to the community.

“I think it’s clear that many of our theaters have distanced themselves from their audience and community,” said Mark Valdez, the artistic director for Mixed Blood. “As the field professionalized, that gap grew. Now we look down on community theater, when before most small towns supported one or two theaters and an opera house. Funders pushed the field to structure themselves as corporations, and so regions lost acting companies. Executive directors and managing directors eventually took the reins from artistic directors (who, to be fair, just as often handed those reins over). Our field sold itself out. Separated itself. Now we wonder why nobody cares about our organizations and our work. Duh!”

Valdez is no stranger to the field. With a career spanning more than 20 years, he has created a wide range of work and has been recognized with a 2021 Zelda Fichandler Award and an inaugural 2021 California Arts Council Legacy Artist Fellowship.

What separates Mixed Blood from its competition is simple. The company does not see its impact as being artistically focused. It does no art for the sake of indulgence. It always intends to serve those who need it, at all costs.

“We are first a social justice organization, then a theater,” explained Valdez. “We use theater to achieve our social justice aims.”

In every activity and every decision, Mixed Blood ensures that its service to the community is nontoxic, intended to serve those in the community.

“Radical hospitality includes no-cost admission,” said Valdez. “We rely exclusively on donations. We have wealthy donors, but they support our organization for the benefit of the community, not themselves. In fact, few of those donors participate in our programing.”

“As for serving the public need,” he continued, “we are increasingly creating work with community members. We want them to have agency in the work. We boost civic imagination, working around pressing civic issues such as affordable housing, health, and climate resilience. Our work aims to provide opportunities for audiences to do something, believing that if they can do one thing, they can do something else. Our work is driven towards taking action.”

And there is a public need.

The infamous 2020 murder of George Floyd by a police officer who knelt on his neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds did not indicate a new type of local police violence, but a continuation and exacerbation of old racial sores that did not heal the wounds predicated by racial covenants (segregationist legal rules inserted into property deeds and titles that made it impossible for land to be owned by non-White people). Those racial covenants forced Black people, for example, to live in only a few pockets of the city of Minneapolis. Even though those covenants were made illegal in 1968 by the Fair Housing Act, their scars resulted in a 2019 study by 24/7 Wall Street that named the Twin Cities as the fourth worst metropolitan statistical area in the United States for Black citizens.

One neighborhood that allowed Black residency was near the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue, the very corner at which George Floyd was murdered. As Olivia B. Waxman reported in the May 28, 2020, edition of Time Magazine (three days after the killing):

“Floyd’s death ‘falls within a larger pattern’ of clashes between police officers and residents in black communities that ‘goes way back to the period of Reconstruction, when a lot of police departments were created to surveil black communities and control and corral large black populations,’ said Keith A. Mayes, a professor of African American & African Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.”

There are numerous arts organizations in and around Minneapolis. But as liberal as the state’s voting record has been through the years (it was the one state that voted for favorite son Walter Mondale in the presidential election of 1984), the city is split along racial lines. Among the arts organizations, that community bifurcation has led to a history of large, predominately White nonprofit arts organizations (the Guthrie Theatre, for example) that serve their privileged donors and audiences, paying token attention to the people not included, not represented, and not respected.

Mixed Blood has found that to be both hindrance and opportunity. Their strengths are found in performing social justice activities for those historically overwhelmed.
“Since its founding, Mixed Blood has centered those most on the margins,” said Valdez. “As a social justice organization, we want to use our work to influence public policies, knowing that much of the discrimination and bias in place is enshrined in our laws. We’re focusing on greater affordable housing, equitable healthcare, and climate resilience. BIPOC communities are often hit first and hardest by climate change.”

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It should be self-evident, but it’s often a good reminder to nonprofit arts organizational leaders and board members that work that positively impacts the least privileged among us benefits all of us. While most arts organizations believe that their collective purpose is to produce artistic excellence — even to the detriment of including its own community’s artists (instead hiring those from arts hubs such as Toronto, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles) — Mixed Blood is a very personal, very local, couldn’t-exist-anywhere-else point of Minnesota joy. It’s the kind of work that allows a leader like Valdez to look up and visualize instead of down and weep.

“I want to be of use, useful to my community and the greater society,” he said. “Similarly, I want our theater to be useful to its community. Can we build civic imagination to see past the dystopian futures pop culture feeds us? Can we co-daydream beautiful futures? Artmaking lets us build consensus, make meaning, foster belonging, build worlds, and rehearse actions. These skills, these actions are vital to the health of our communities. There is no lasting solution to the giant social challenges we are facing that doesn’t include the arts. It’s our time to take leadership.”

When financial duress happens, how does the connection to the community continue?

“Community is not a monolith. When faced with financial hardships, we have to look at the various communities we serve. One of those communities is our own staff. We have a responsibility to care for our staff, the people at the organization who are doing the work. Then we ask how this group can serve our other communities? For instance, at the moment [2024], we are currently producing fewer shows in our own facility. We are doing more work outside our building, meeting the community members where they are — not necessarily with fully produced plays, but with mobile, flexible work that feeds the imagination and creates a forum for action and discussion.”

The flexibility of the company stems from its interpretation of radical hospitality. When faced with challenges, they seek the ways in which to help those who need it over those who merely want it. And that includes its own staff.

“There is a tension,” explained Valdez, “that every employee holds, from entry level to top management: the balance between mission alignment and amount of salary. We try to remain aware of that balance, paying people fair wages and looking for individuals who have common values, whose skills augment others’ deficits. It’s not a science, rather alchemy. Sometimes you get it wrong and need to course correct. That’s usually unpleasant, but necessary. When it works, though, you feel it. You see it in how the team works. Individual leadership and care for the community (our own community).”

The power of the arts is not limited to exuding beauty, providing an escape, or showcasing artistic skills. In fact, those aren’t community powers at all. Any or all might be present within a particular artistic activity, but the value comes from the tangible, quantified positive impact the company has on the community… just like any other kind of nonprofit.

Mark Valdez gets up in the morning to “serve my community and the greater society. That provides meaning for my life. Theater lets me serve; to do good.” Shouldn’t that be why every nonprofit arts organization exists? Isn’t that more deserving of a seven-figure check than one that merely puts on a great show?

In case you’re wondering, I’m a donor to Mixed Blood. They’re a beacon of charity in a nonprofit arts sector in which there are few…for now. And as I would do with a good movie, a great restaurant, or a terrific store, I want you to share in my good fortune for having found them. Send them a donation. They deserve it.

And it goes without saying, but the cynics among us request this: no, they paid not a cent for this article. This is not an “advertorial.” In the coming months, I’ll continue to feature more companies that walk the walk — if for no other reason than to show you that it is, in fact, possible to use art as a tool and not as a product. And to national foundation program directors: do a mitzvah and include Mixed Blood in your giving portfolio. They’ll make your foundation more valuable.

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