Essay | The Root River Anthology: Five Years Later

The heart is an instrument, once broken, never repairs the same…things that are broken that can’t be cured. You can’t go back. But you can heal it, and that’s an important thing to know.”

Kevin Kling

ROOT RIVER VALLEY—As I grow, time feels both fluid and full. To think that it was just a mere five years ago that we were in and out of lockdown due to the pandemic of 2020!

That year was a time of great heartbreak for many; we were bowled over by how quickly life changed. So it came as no surprise that, as a writer, a flood analogy seemed apt for a project that had been steeping in my soul: A play called The Root River Anthology.

But as it became clear we couldn’t produce live theater, some friends and I (namely Rachel Kuhnele and Josiah Laubenstein) got together and decided we’d do something else, something equally as fulfilling, which was to create a radio play.

I’ve always loved plays about Americana and had been working on a play called The Root River Anthology for a couple of years. It was inspired, in part, by a story I heard on NPR called, “A Really Long Distance,” produced by Miki Meek about a farmer in Japan who after the tsunami in 2016 put a telephone booth up in his field for community members to talk to the dead.

It was such a marvelous, eerie story, and I thought, “How perfect!” A telephone booth and a flood were precisely the means, the ideal conduits I needed to tell the stories that had been bubbling inside me for the past few years – as both a phone booth and flooding are inherently tied to Lanesboro, too.

While the bulk of the play is constructed from my own imagination, it also possesses elements of devised theater – that is, the work bears the imprints of many.

In 2018-2019, I held workshops in Lanesboro to teach storytelling and monologue writing, and so some of the echoes of those words and works flow through the play. Workshop participant Julie Eckstrom’s writing, created the foundation for Lena; Ruth Furan’s words are woven with mine to make the character of Heddy; Blake Norby’s words are woven into the character of Noah; and Paul Hamman’s chilling true storytelling of Catherine Sullivan created the backbone for the character of Paulie.

Once we began creating the actual radio play in 2020, I began working with actors from A.R.T. (Audacious Raw Theater) and the Commonweal Theatre. I tasked some of them with writing or even improvising their monologues – notably Elizabeth Dunn, Jerome Yorke and Eric Carranza all contributed original works. The play is far richer because of their contributions.

And then Commonweal company member Josiah Laubenstein stepped in with a sound design that is absolutely integral to the work’s beauty. He and St. Paul-based musician Eric Carranza orchestrated a soundtrack that brought the world to life with footsteps, raindrops, ephemeral music from Eric’s Root River Vibes, along with heartbeats that synchronize with those of every listener out there. 

When I first started on the piece, I wanted to create something “old school” like Thornton Wilder’s American classic Our Town.

Our Town was the first show I’d ever seen at the Guthrie Theater with my Aunt Colleen. The simplicity and honesty of that work have haunted me in the best way possible. 

The main character, Emily Webb, dies from the flu during the pandemic of 1917, and after her death, she returns home and asks: Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?

And the Stage Manager replies: No. The saints and poets, maybe they do some.

I wanted people in lockdown to have time to reflect on what we had in that moment.

Five years later, I still yearn for that. As a theater-maker, a communication coach and a wanna-be poet, I strive to help people be present and relish in the here and now.

Over four hundred years ago, Shakespeare wrote that “the purpose of playing” was to hold a mirror up to nature; “to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.”

Some weeks ago I listened back to Parts One and Two of the Anthology again. I was pleased to note the “form and pressure” of the work seem to have held up. I actually cried at times; the play is so full of love and longing, while its darker moments also address depression, death and suicide.

As we wander through the Season where Light is scarce, I find this passage from the play especially moving:

“The thing is Bert, when you’re depressed, it’s exactly like drowning. People think you need to flail your arms and reach for help, but drowning isn’t anything like that; it’s a conservation of all that’s precious. It’s distilling everything you have in order to survive. 

“Then there is an epiphany, and you realize you aren’t going to make it. So you surrender. The water rushes in and fills your lungs, and all that pain washes away. 

“For a moment, I almost thought I could breathe like a fish, and so I purposefully took in more water, then sedation was so sweet. So freeing. I felt so light, for the first time ever. 

“I was Light.”

The Root River Anthology is a play about what it means to be human, what it means to choose life in a small town. To feel the tether and tie to family and community. To the past and the present. It’s about forging faith on the anvil of time and surrendering one’s fury in the hopes of finding a soft reprieve of forgiveness. 

The language is often archaic, and that is purposeful. I want listeners to question when and where everything happens, and how the past and present blur at times, creating a portal to the future.

Five years later, what I find so astonishing and yet utterly obvious is that the metaphorical flood still looms. But we haven’t drowned yet! And somehow the waters don’t seem to be receding either.

Isn’t that something?

Somehow, someway, we keep flowing. Some are lost. Others are found. New folks move to the area. And thankfully, new art that reflects it all continues to be made. 

This seemingly small play in its own way became a flood of creativity. The Root River Anthology lead to the radio play, the radio play lead to the creation of ten videos, that are an homage to George Floyd and Martin Luther King called Still Flowing,; and those monologues lead to my making a film written by Liz Bucheit called Origin. 

I hope that in its fifth anniversary season, flaws and all, The Root River Anthology moves you – and perhaps even heals you.

After all, it was and always will be an homage to you, my dear friends and neighbors.

Listen to The Root River Anthology, Part I:

Listen to The Root River Anthology, Part II: