This year, Playwrights’ Center is exceptionally grateful for our generative partnership with the Minnesota-based McKnight Foundation. As our 2025-2026 season approaches, they continue to join with us to invest in a “more just, creative, and abundant future” at a time when this commitment has become increasingly rare.
As a result, the Center is thrilled to welcome a group of artists who plan to use their singular voices to tackle the urgent issues of this historical moment…and who also know how to make us laugh.
We will kick off our first season at our brand-new arts center in the excellent company of McKnight Playwriting Fellows Marge Buckley and Gemma Irish, along with McKnight Theater Artists Peter Morrow, Isabel Nelson, and Mikell Sapp. McKnight National Residency and Commission recipient C.A. Johnson will complete this brilliant cohort.
The McKnight Fellowship in Playwriting recognizes and supports mid-career playwrights living and working in Minnesota who demonstrate a sustained body of work, commitment to their craft, and distinct artistic vision.
Incoming fellow Gemma Irish confesses she “can’t seem to stop writing about death,” but also calls her work “funny and smart, with shades of magical realism.” During her time with us she plans to continue work on “an ambitious play about the early days of the cooperative food movement in Minnesota. I also hope to get down on paper (and up on its feet) a class-conscious comedy about cannibalism that for now is called Eat the Rich.”
Minneapolis-based Marge Buckley will “spend my fellowship year workshopping, among other projects, a classically-inspired bedroom farce. I want to use the structure of farce to explore political lobbying, contemporary relationship practices, and marginalized sexualities.”
Buckley is Playwright-in-Residence at Commutator Collective, an experimental theater community which mounts “full productions, hybrid dance party/avant garde performance events, and an annual Purim spiel.”
The McKnight Theater Artist Fellowships at Playwrights’ Center recognize mid-career theater artists other than playwrights who are living and working in Minnesota. Selection is based on a commitment to theater arts, evidence of professional achievement, and a sustained body of work over multiple years.
Mikell Sapp’s body of work is well-known and loved by the local community, and his face will likely be recognizable to anyone who has occupied a seat at a Twin Cities theater. From Mixed Blood to Pillsbury House, Penumbra to the Guthrie, Mikell’s acting journey has intrigued and moved us. We’re overjoyed to be a part of what’s to come for him.
“Receiving the McKnight Theater Artist Fellowship means that the work I’ve poured my heart into is seen and valued. To join the ranks of recipients whose work I deeply admire makes this recognition all the more meaningful.”
Isabel Nelson is a director, performer, and theater creator in the Twin Cities who has most recently brought their creative practice into collaboration with folks incarcerated at Stillwater Correctional Facility and Shakopee Correctional Facility.
“This work has been nothing short of transformative for me. I am thrilled at the opportunity this fellowship presents to deepen that work, and to continue exploring what theater has to offer as an avenue for healing and expression for those who are incarcerated. I understand theater and storytelling to be deeply connected to somatic practice across disciplines, group facilitation work, communal creative practices like community singing, and even restorative justice work and circle practices. I plan to use some of the time and resources afforded by this fellowship to ‘train up’ in these areas.”
Sound designer Peter Morrow moved to the Twin Cities from Dublin, Ireland in 2012 and quickly found community and collaborators here.
“I love creating, and talking about creating things with others. It’s hard though to carve out the time needed for the planning and dreaming side of the work in the hustle of freelance life. This fellowship will hopefully give me a chance to reset financially over the coming year, allowing me to spend time on some work of my own, more time for friends and community and some space to just be and ideate with collaborators.”
Producing Artistic Director Nicole A. Watson is eager to welcome these artists to 710 Raymond Ave. “These fellowships represent the full range of the Center’s commitment to supporting incredible playwrights and the artists who bring their words, and worlds, to life on stage—as well as our dedication to showcasing both Minnesota-based and national theater makers. Investing in artists is necessary and joyful work. I’m thrilled that these fellows will help us inaugurate our new home and bring us together. I can’t wait to support and celebrate their artistry!”
The McKnight National Residency and Commission invites an established playwright from outside of Minnesota to join the Twin Cities community. This year we will welcome C.A. Johnson, a Brooklyn-based playwright originally from Metairie, Louisiana. She’ll be adapting text for the stage for the first time, and she is not starting small. Her current goal is to turn the short story “The Dead” by James Joyce into a play. “Ultimately, my hope is to pull taut a string that I have always felt connects Joyce’s Dublin with the New Orleans of my youth. Maybe it’s both cities’ love of a good drink? Maybe it’s our hometown pride. Maybe it’s our painfully present colonial pasts. No matter the tether, I can’t wait for time at Playwrights’ Center to nurture this exploration away from the hustle and bustle of my daily life.”
About the artists
Marge J. Buckley is a playwright and painter based in Minneapolis, MN. She is the Playwright-in-Residence at Commutator Collective, an experimental theatre community which mounts full productions, hybrid dance-party-avant-garde-performance events, and an annual Purim spiel. Marge graduated from Emerson College in 2017 with a BFA in Acting. Her play The Earth Room premiered at Boston’s Fresh Ink Theatre in 2019. Her Commutator Collective productions include Detective Chunk, the Multiverse, and Me (recently mounted at Heart of the Beast Theatre), Grainville Cereals Incorporated, Phylloxera!, and Woman vs. Wachine. Marge’s text plays with theatrical form in order to examine radical systemic change.
Gemma Irish is a playwright, educator, and occasional performer based in Minneapolis. Her plays tend to be funny and smart, with shades of magical realism. She can’t seem to stop writing about death.
Her work has been seen all over Minneapolis and New York City, and she is a proud founding member of the Twin Cities Playwright Cabal, a group of ambitious women playwrights who promote new scripted work in Minnesota, and are each others’ number one fans.
Gemma holds an MFA in Playwriting from Goddard College (RIP); and a BA in playwriting from Eugene Lang College, The New School.
C.A. Johnson is a Brooklyn-based playwright originally from Metairie, Louisiana. Her plays include All The Natalie Portmans (MCC Theater); Thirst (2017 Kilroys List, CATF); The Climb (Cherry Lane Mentor Project, InterAct Theatre Company); An American Feast (NYU Playwrights Horizons Theater School); I Know I Know I Know, Somebody’s Body, and The Witnesses (upcoming at Chautauqua Theater Company in 2025). Most recently, she was awarded the Horton Foote Award by the Dramatists Guild and a Helen Merrill Award by the New York Community Trust. She is currently a resident playwright at New Dramatists and has held residencies/fellowships with MCC Theater, P73, the Dramatists Guild, MacDowell, Playwrights’ Center, and Sundance (among others). Her work has been commissioned by Manhattan Theatre Club, Seattle Rep, Page 73, and Chautauqua Theater Company. C.A. also has an active career in film and television. BA: Smith College MFA: NYU
Peter Morrow moved to the Twin Cities from Dublin, Ireland in 2012. He quickly found community and collaborators in the Twin Cities by stumbling into Bedlam shortly after he arrived, a community which has continued to grow and become a second home. Peter has designed, composed and collaborated with many companies, colleges, and amazing artists along the way including zAmya, Interact, Wonderlust, Full Circle, Red Eye Theater, Pillsbury House + Theatre, Stages Theatre Company, Exposed Brick, Mni Giizhik, New Arab American Theater, Theater Mu, Penumbra, New Native Theatre, Pangea, Playwrights’ Center, Theater Latté Da, The Children’s Theatre Company and The Guthrie Theater; Body Watani, BRKFST, Collide and Twin Cities Ballet; Ifrah Mansour, A.P. Looze, Akiko Ostlund, Diver Van Avery, Pedra Pepa and Asha Rowland.
Isabel Nelson (she/they) is a director, performer, and theater creator in the Twin Cities. Isabel served as founding artistic director of critically-acclaimed physical theater ensemble Transatlantic Love Affair (TLA) from 2010-2022, and has directed or collaborated on ten original works with the company. Most recently, Isabel has brought their creative practice to bear in collaboration with folx incarcerated at Stillwater Correctional Facility and Shakopee Correctional Facility. Isabel believes in storytelling as a vessel for healing, and theater as sacred action – an opportunity to imagine, embody, and create the just and generative world we deserve.
Mikell Sapp is from Phenix City, AL, and a proud graduate of Alabama State University. He is Minnesota’s 2015 Ivey Award winner for Emerging Artist. Selected theater credits include: Pussy Valley (Mixed Blood), The Snowy Day (Children’s Theatre Company), Charlie Black (Pillsbury), Skeleton Crew (Guthrie), Broke-Ology (Pillsbury), The Ballad of Emmett Till (Penumbra), The Agitators (Park Square), Hot Asian Doctor Husband (Theater Mu), and Paradise Blue (Penumbra).