Voices of Rochester: an interview with a local playwright

The lights come up on a folding chair, a coffee mug, and a writer who has spent the last decade turning Rochester, Minnesota into a stage. This conversation with a Northland Words playwright is part of an ongoing series exploring the makers, performers, and dreamers who shape the cultural life of a small Midwestern city. It also reflects something that resonates deeply with audiences in Australia, where regional theatre scenes in towns like Bendigo, Geelong, and Hobart have long punched well above their weight.

The playwright sat down with me over a flat white in a quiet café to talk about craft, community, and why live storytelling still matters. What follows is a candid, wide-ranging interview that touches on first plays, stubborn collaborators, and the unusual politics of putting on Shakespeare in a public park.

A writer's long road to the stage

The playwright grew up in a house full of books and one very loud uncle who insisted on reciting monologues at every family gathering. By the time they were twelve, they had filled three notebooks with sketches for a musical about the local grain elevator. The grain elevator musical was never finished, but the notebooks marked the beginning of a habit that has not changed.

They studied English and theatre at a small liberal arts college, then drifted into marketing for nearly a decade before the writing pulled them back. Many Australian playwrights follow a similar winding path, taking a long swing through advertising or teaching before returning to the page, sometimes spurred by a workshop at the Australian Writers' Guild. The Rochester writer describes the moment of return almost as a physical sensation, the kind of morning where you reach for a notebook before you reach for your keys.

Their first produced play was a one-act about a woman running a laundromat who starts giving unsolicited life advice. It played at a regional festival and was, in their words, "terrible and perfect and exactly what I needed to make." That production taught them a truth they still repeat to students in Northland Words' youth classes: the first draft is not a finished thing. It is a starting handshake.

Rochester as a creative home

Rochester is best known to outsiders as the home of the Mayo Clinic, but to the playwright it is something else entirely. It is a city where the librarian knows your name, where a local coffee roaster sponsors an open mic, and where a small but stubborn arts organisation has decided that the work of theatre is not a luxury. They describe Northland Words as a gathering point, a place where theatre, literature, and music share the same room and sometimes the same rehearsal schedule. Readers curious about the breadth of that work can read about Northland Words and see how the organisation weaves these forms together.

There is a useful parallel for Australian audiences. Cities like Wollongong or Launceston share that same mixture of healthcare, education, and a creative undercurrent that is easy to miss if you only fly in for a conference. The playwright argues that regional cities are not, for them, smaller versions of Sydney or Melbourne. They are different kinds of cities entirely, with their own weather, their own politics, and their own appetite for risk. A play that works in the inner suburbs of Melbourne might fall flat in Rochester, and vice versa, because the audience brings its own weather into the room.

Finding stories in the everyday

When asked where their material comes from, the playwright laughs and points out the window. "I write about the soup cabinet at the co-op. I write about the man who yells at his phone at the bus stop. I write about weather." This commitment to the local detail is something Australian theatre has long celebrated, from the early plays of David Williamson to the contemporary work of writers developing new work at the Queensland Theatre or the Merrigong Theatre in Wollongong.

Their most recent full-length play follows three siblings returning to their childhood home after the death of their father, only to discover that the home has been quietly remodelled by a stranger who claims to be a distant cousin. It is a small story about inheritance, place, and the strange negotiations families make with the past. The playwright describes the process of writing it as slow, sometimes painful, and almost always accompanied by long walks along the Zumbro River.

They are wary of plays that mistake plot for meaning. A story, they argue, is not a sequence of surprises. It is a way of paying attention. Their advice to young writers in Northland Words' youth programs is deceptively simple: write down what you saw today, write down what you did not understand, and then keep writing until you do.

Building an ensemble at Words Players Theatre

Words Players Theatre is the production arm of Northland Words, and the playwright has worked with the company on everything from Thornton Wilder festivals to original new work. They describe the ensemble as a kind of long-running conversation, a group of actors and designers who have learned each other's rhythms over many seasons. That kind of ensemble loyalty is rare in any regional context, and it is something that Australian companies like the Melbourne Theatre Company's education wing or the Brisbane-based Shake and Stir Theatre Co. spend considerable effort cultivating. Building a true ensemble is less about casting and more about shared meals, long car rides to regional venues, and a shared tolerance for imperfect rehearsals.

The playwright is quick to credit the directors who have shaped their work, and equally quick to defend the rights of playwrights to be present in the room. A text, they argue, is not a sculpture to be admired from a distance. It is a living document that grows in conversation with the people who speak it. They push back gently against the idea that a playwright should vanish after handing over a draft, and instead advocate for a slower, more collaborative model of new play development that includes table reads, post-show notes, and a standing invitation to come back next season.

Shakespeare in the Park and the politics of the outdoors

For more than a decade, Northland Words has mounted an annual Shakespeare in the Park series, and the playwright has directed and written adaptations for these productions. Performing outdoors in Minnesota requires a particular kind of stubbornness, because summer afternoons can shift from brilliant sun to sudden thunderstorms within an hour. The company has learned to design for both, with quick-change tent backdrops, weather-resistant scripts, and actors who can project over a wind that refuses to follow stage directions.

There is an obvious kinship with Australian outdoor theatre traditions. From the Sydney Shakespeare season at the Royal Botanic Garden to the summer programs at HOTA on the Gold Coast, audiences in this country have long understood that outdoor performance is a contract with the elements. The playwright sees the weather not as an obstacle but as another actor in the production, one whose entrances cannot be choreographed and whose motivations are, frankly, beyond rehearsal.

Audiences seem to agree. The Shakespeare in the Park series regularly draws families, students, and the occasional dog, and the playwright takes a particular pleasure in hearing a child's voice call out an answer to a character who has just asked a question. Those unscripted interruptions, they argue, are part of the show. The contract is not between the actors and the audience but between everyone present and the evening itself.

The Wilder influence and the short play form

Northland Words hosts an annual Thornton Wilder Short Play Festival, and the playwright considers Wilder's work a kind of north star for their own. Wilder's famous Our Town is a play that argues, gently and relentlessly, that ordinary life is worth our full attention. The playwright returns to Wilder often, and their own short plays share that commitment to small scenes, plain language, and the occasional breaking of form.

The short play form is well suited to a community theatre context, because it allows the company to commission multiple writers, train emerging directors, and give newer actors a chance to carry a full piece without the demands of a two-hour mainstage production. Australian companies like ATYP in Sydney have built entire reputations around strong short-play programming, and the model travels well across very different cultural landscapes, from inner Sydney to towns in the upper Barossa, from Brisbane fringe nights to quiet Northland evenings.

The playwright is currently developing a new short play for next year's festival that takes place entirely inside a single kitchen over the course of a Sunday afternoon. They will not say much more about it, only that it involves a great deal of pie and at least one argument about how to fold a tea towel.

Why community theatre still matters

The interview closes with a question that the playwright receives often: why bother with live theatre in a city where streaming, gaming, and endless scrollable feeds compete for every spare minute of attention. Their answer is unfashionable and, they hope, true. Live theatre is one of the last places where a group of strangers agrees to be in a room together, breathe the same air, and watch the same story unfold in real time. That agreement is fragile, and it is precious.

They point out that every ticket sold to a Northland Words production is also a vote for the kind of city Rochester wants to be. A city with a working theatre is a city that values attention, patience, and the slow craft of listening. A town without one is still a fine place to live, but it has quietly given something away. The playwright frames this as a civic choice rather than an artistic one, and they argue that the work of organisations like Northland Words is part of the basic infrastructure of a thoughtful community.

A final question, asked by an eight-year-old in the front row, lingers in the playwright's memory: how do you know when a play is finished. Their answer was simple and worth repeating here. A play is finished when the people in the room are listening more than they are waiting to speak. Anyone who wants to help sustain this work can support Northland Words and the makers who fill its seasons. The playwright's next play will arrive on stage in the spring, weather permitting, and there will be pie.