Mission, Anti-Racism Values, and History

Mission

Sleeping Weazel productions combine bold, experimental style with social justice ideals. Celebrating the ridiculous, the sublime, and the earth-shattering, our aim is to cross the boundaries of popular and high art, and to collaborate with artists of different generations and cultures, working in various genres. The company motto, “Making Different Possible,” means we dream awake with our audiences in Boston, and together we make life-changing art.

Note: We are a company producing our own works, including those of our affiliated artists.

Anti-Racism Values Statement

Sleeping Weazel’s leaders stand in solidarity with the Black community and support the Black Lives Matter movement. We commit to the ongoing process of interrogating ourselves within racist systems and structures that play out in the theatre and everywhere. In creating and presenting experimental theatre and performance with social justice ideals, we oppose all forms of oppression and specifically government sanctioned, culturally normalized violence perpetrated against Black people. As three white women running a small, low budget company, we produce new multimedia works at the vanguard by socially progressive, revolutionary thinkers confronting rampant Capitalism and White Supremacy for promoting and enacting wide-spread oppression embedded in U.S. culture.

History

Sleeping Weazel was founded in 1998 by David G. Hopkins to produce independent films, live and audio theatre, and a multi-genre experimental web magazine based in Bristol, UK. After moving permanently to the United States, he continued to work in New York on theatre productions with Charlotte Meehan until his untimely death in May 2004.The name Sleeping Weazel alludes to the idea of “dreaming awake,” or being in a productive state of unconsciousness wherein the artist works to imagine and manifest what was previously outside the realm of possibility. In extending the invitation to join a work of art finding its way to new dimensions, the imaginary becomes a place of enchantment, growth, and abundant potential for all participants.

Relaunched in 2012 and led by Charlotte Meehan, Jessica Ernst, and Adara Meyers, Sleeping Weazel maintains the spirit of David’s original vision for making and presenting art in a multiplicity of contexts that extend art forms with flexibility and grace.