Curtain comes down temporarily on Minneapolis playhouse

The curtain has come down suddenly on the Jungle Theater.

The Minneapolis company known for productions of shows such as “Dinner for One” has announced that it is suspending operations, effective immediately.

The “temporary pause” comes the weekend after federal agents engaged in an immigration crackdown near the theater’s doors.

“ICE did not cause this, but it certainly compounded things for us,” artistic director Christina Baldwin said.

The pause means the indefinite postponement of upcoming productions such as Hansol Jung’s “Wolf Play” and “Letters from Max” by Sarah Ruhl, who is among America’s most produced playwrights.

The Jungle also is scotching a reading series of new plays.

The company has a 148-seat auditorium and operates on an annual budget that has varied between $1.2 million and $1.7 million in recent years. It has put its six full-time employees and a part-timer on indefinite furlough.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Jungle usually did about six productions. The comeback from the pandemic has been erratic, with the Jungle maxing out at four shows in a season.

Baldwin, who took the Jungle reins after former leader Sarah Rasmussen left in 2020 to work at McCarter Theatre in Princeton, N.J., said that she has “only known chaos” during her tenure.

“Ever since COVID, the nonprofit arts sector in general, and theater specifically, has seen a very hard time,” Baldwin said.

She attributed the shutdown to an accumulation of sizable shifts and dips in things like corporate funding and institutional giving.

“We’re under siege at the moment and we need a breather,” Baldwin said.

Jungle staff provided coffee, tea and hot cocoa to community volunteers during the tumult.

“This latest chaos and the violence have triggered so much hurt within our community, which was already under a blanket of grief trying to build back after the murder of George Floyd,” Baldwin said.