Our Story

Yellow Tree breathes life into complex stories of our shared human experiences which ignite our hearts, spark curiosity and expand our imaginations.

We strive to be a welcoming artistic venue where people of diverse backgrounds from all communities can gather to experience exceptional, professional productions in the suburbs of Minneapolis.

Yellow Tree’s Values

  • We value artistic excellence and seek to produce high-quality professional productions by hiring actors, directors and technicians who exhibit a high caliber of talent.

  • To be a welcoming and vibrant theater where people of all backgrounds and communities can come together to experience stories that reflect the wide breadth of the human experience, reflecting on and celebrating the diverse communities we live in.

  • To be the home of relevant, sustaining, and innovative professional theatre in the suburbs of Minneapolis, producing cutting edge, classic and contemporary plays and musicals with top-notch regional and national artists.

  • We value the devotedness, commitment and sacrifice that actors, directors and technicians put forth and so we strive to cultivate a theater company where a diverse body of artists are artistically inspired, and financially compensated with a competitive living wage in a safe, joyful environment.

Recognition

2014 Metropolitan Regional Arts Council Arts Achievement Award

2014 Ivey Awards for Outstanding Direction & Acting in The 39 Steps

2014 Best of MN "Best Unexpected Place to Find Great Theater" Mpls. Star Tribune

2015 Top Ten Twin Cities Productions of 2015, Dancing at Lughnasa, Mpls. Star Tribune  

2016 National Theater Company Grant, American Theater Wing

2017 “Outstanding Lead Actor,” Jason Ballweber, One Man, Two Guvnors, Lavender Magazine

2017 Twin Cities Arts Reader, Top Ten Production of 2017, Grace

2017 “Best comedic performance by an ensemble”One Man Two Guvnors, TC Theater Blogger Awards

2018  Awarded a residency at Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky, Montana

2018 The Royale named by Mpls. Star Tribune as a Top Ten Theater Production of the Year

2018 The Miracle Worker actor Kiara Jackson named “Theater Artist of the Year”, Lavender Magazine

2018 The Miracle Worker actor Catie Bair named "Best Supporting Actress”, Lavender Magazine

2019 Best of Osseo Awards in the category of Performing Arts Group

2019 Cry it Out named a Top 10 Production of 2019, Mpls. Star Tribune’s Chris Hewitt

2019 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, 10 Best Twin Cities Theater Productions
in 2019, Star Tribune’s Rohan Preston

History

Yellow Tree Theatre was founded in 2008 by theater artists and husband/wife team Jason Peterson and Jessica Lind Peterson in response to a need for the arts in the Northwest Suburbs of Minneapolis.

Yellow Tree was born with the goal of creating a welcoming artistic venue, with live theater as its backbone, which would also serve as a vibrant artistic hub for the community.  Also, our artists are hugely important to us, and we seek to cultivate a theater company where artists are creatively challenged, artistically inspired and financially supported.

What kind of plays do we do?

Good ones! Old ones. New ones. Quirky ones. Plays that you may never have heard of. Plays where characters may be a little off-the-wall but their stories are amazing. We like to take chances. We want you to come to our plays and have a good chuckle or shed a few tears. We want to see your Aunt Jevetta laugh so hard she gets the hiccups and disrupts the actors. We want to see your Uncle Al, the big burly truck driver in the third row, get out his hanky, wipe his eyes and blame it on hay fever. We want to surprise you and inspire you and remind you about being human. We want our plays to stir up conversations between teenagers who wear hoodies and grandparents who wear dentures. We think telling a good story and telling it well can do all sorts of things, and we want you to join us in the great adventure we call theatre!

What folks are saying…

"There’s a unique pleasure in discovering a new small theater, and Yellow Tree has hooked me." — MN Monthly

“If you haven’t been to Yellow Tree, it’s worth the trip.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Yellow Tree is a marvelous theater”—TC Daily Planet