"An arrangement in blood and ferocity, morbid, bizarre, repulsive, and very offensive."
The Times, 1893
Initially banned from performance and skewered by critics as “half Biblical, half pornographic,” and “bloodily degenerate,” Oscar Wilde’s 1893 play retells the story of Salomé and John the Baptist in a fever dream of poetic eroticism, laying bare issues of gender, religion, obsession, power, and censorship.
Partnering with PAIKKA through their inaugural Creative Cohort, stage director Grant Sorenson reimagines Wilde's scandalous masterpiece as a semi-immersive piece of event theater, inviting the audience into Herod's banquet -- a charged world where spectacle and intimacy coexist, mirroring the play’s erotic tension and moral decay.
This new production marks the play's first professional production in the Twin Cities, running February 20-28, 2026 at PAIKKA in St. Paul.