A Unique Company
Since 1989, the professional artists of the Commonweal have brought to life soulful stories told with honesty and creativity. Located in the heart of southeast Minnesota’s bluff country, Lanesboro (pop. 788) is home to the company’s new theatre in its historic downtown.
The heart of the Commonweal’s programming is the main stage season. This balanced yet challenging repertory is comprised of up to six plays with more than 200 performances, chosen from among the world's finest classic, contemporary, and emerging playwrights. Because Lanesboro is located amidst a high concentration of Norwegian-American families, the Commonweal produces the works of Henrik Ibsen annually, and remains the only theatre company in North America with such a commitment. The company hosts an annual New Play Series which has yielded over a dozen world premieres since its inception, and produces Over the Back Fence, a live, one-hour radio variety show broadcast weekly over a local radio station from Memorial Day through Labor Day.
The Commonweal boasts a rare organizational model, with resident company members (who have come from all over the country to make their home in the Lanesboro area) fulfilling the day-to-day artistic and operational needs of the company as artist/administrators.
A New Home
In July 2007, the new $3.5 million Commonweal facility opened to widespread acclaim. While offering patrons a welcoming, intimate experience in a 200-seat house, the exterior façade recreates three charming Lanesboro shop fronts, and the interior design focuses on the natural beauty and history of the region with barn doors acting as bathroom stalls, stone walls mirroring the surrounding bluffs, concrete floors reflecting the building’s prior life as a cheese factory, and seats reclaimed from the original Guthrie Theater.
Focus on Education
The Commonweal maintains that each artist is most fully realized when engaged simultaneously in creating, teaching and learning. To this end, its eight education programs are designed for students of all ages and skill levels. Student matinees and a curricular Theatre Skills class serve regional middle and high school students; Elderhostel, in cooperation with Winona State University, serves life-long learners; Theatre-with-Friends gives groups a deeper theatre experience via study guides, discounted tickets, pre-show workshops, tours and post-show talkbacks. Commonweal artists also teach master classes at regional colleges and universities and hold two adjunct professorships at Luther College.