How Sketches of Minnesota Uses Comedy to Bring People Together
Is it possible to have tough conversations while still laughing together?
🎥 Watch the full Minnesota Live interview here:
That’s exactly what Sketches of Minnesota set out to do. In a recent interview on Minnesota Live, Tane Danger (Danger Boat Productions) and Trygve Throntveit (Minnesota Humanities Center) shared how this unique theatrical project took them across the state, gathering real conversations from Minnesotans in 10 different towns and transforming them into a scripted comedy performance.
The project started as a statewide listening tour, where communities shared their stories, challenges, and quirky local debates—like who really belongs in a small town or the eternal cabin-owner vs. full-time resident divide. These conversations became the backbone of Sketches of Minnesota, proving that comedy can be a powerful tool for connection.
Now, these stories take center stage at two live performances:
📅 February 11 – St. Cloud (Paramount Center for the Arts)
📅 February 25 – Minneapolis (Brave New Workshop)
🎥 Watch the full Minnesota Live interview here:
Comedy, storytelling, and real community voices—all coming together for a show you won’t want to miss! Tickets are currently sold out, but you can jump on the waitlist.
Transcript
Chris Egert:
Morning, it's nine 12. We appreciate you watching Minnesota Live. Minnesotans. What we are collectively known for strong Midwestern accent. Some of ours brick sold a little bit more than it should, being Minnesota nice. Tater tot hot dish ice fishing.
Megan Newquist:
Yeah, we covered it all.
Chris Egert:
Yeah. We also have differences and they can vary greatly from different communities across the state. From Winona to International Falls, Minnesota encompasses a vast diversity of opinions, values, and cultures.
Megan Newquist:
So Sketches of Minnesota explores this in a comedy show. It takes real conversations that were overheard in 10 different Minnesota towns and then turns them into skits. Tame Danger is the co-founder of Danger Boat Productions and Trygve Throntveit is from the Minnesota Humanities Center. They're both here to tell us a little bit more about the show. Hi, you two.
Tane Danger:
Hi. Thanks for being here. I'm so excited to be here.
Megan Newquist:
You guys. Let's start backing up a little bit because you guys kind of took the show on the road last year in a little bit of a different form. So talk about that and kind of what you're doing tonight is how it's different.
Tane Danger:
So the notion of sketches in Minnesota as a project was originally that we were going to go to communities all over the state, have a community listening session facilitated by the Minnesota Humanities Center and TRA here in particular, and listen to communities actually talk about things that are really important to them about their towns, about their communities, what's good, what's challenging. And then as you said, our cast of improvisers listened to all of that. And in each town they would then right after the conversation, do a show where they were reflecting back to the community. Here's what we heard you say.
Megan Newquist:
That same night. Yeah.
Tane Danger:
Exactly. Literally right after dinner.
Chris Egert:
Wow. How did you select the cities where you ended up going?
Trygve Throntveit:
Well, at the Humanity Center, our job is to make sure that Minnesotans themselves are using their own stories to build bridges and build trust and prepare themselves to get things done in their town. So we did not want to just select the people who were ready to do that work. So we had an open application process. We promoted it every way we knew how, and we asked people to tell us why you want to bring the show here, what kind of energy you hope to infuse in your town, what challenges you want to surface, and importantly, how are you going to get more than just the usual suspects together, not just in the same place, but different people who might not always interact with one another.
Chris Egert:
Which is kind of the point of it in the first place. Right? 100%. Yeah.
Megan Newquist:
So, I'm kind of curious about the conversations that were had in these different communities in Minnesota. Did you guys find common themes? Were there vast differences depending on the region of the state you were in? How did that work?
Tane Danger:
Both. Both, yes. And to do good improv work. So there were a lot of themes that we heard in a lot of places. So issues like belonging, what does it mean to actually be part of a community who gets to be part of it and who still maybe doesn't feel like they're connected issues? What is the future anxiety or hope about that were similar? But then, yeah, there were similar or differences in some places that were very specific to their thing. But I mean, trig was the person who was really facilitating these conversations and everybody has a story, which is kind of what the Humanity Center is all about. And so bringing that out was a huge part of what we did.
Megan Newquist:
Was it emotional? I mean, were people, was it fiery? I'm just trying to create a picture of and see what it was like inside one of these.
Trygve Throntveit:
It was emotional. It was never fiery. We worked very hard to set the tone from the very beginning when talking to our host organizations at the beginning of the evening before the communal meal to make sure that everyone knew they were there for one purpose, and that was to learn about one another. Not to say you don't sometimes have to argue your point or try to come to consensus, but this was to learn about the other people in your community, to learn about your social world so that you can navigate it better. And people did that, and that meant that their emotions were really productive and made them curious about one another. We didn't have a single argument. In fact, we had people saying, I need to call my brother-in-law for the first time in a month or two months or a year.
Chris Egert:
I mean, that's huge. Sometimes those family things can really fester and could become a bad deal.
Trygve Throntveit:
It could be interesting as we say that.
Chris Egert:
Yeah. Interesting. I was very interested in hearing specifically about the community of Emily, where you're at. I am familiar with the area really. I know a lot of people from the Twin Cities have cabins up in that area. And the conflict that exists, it may not be, no one's going to war over this, but between the cabin owners and people who live in the community of Emily and who's in charge of Emily.
Tane Danger:
Right, right. No, that's a great example of, first of all, I got to say Emily, I have a soft spot of all. We went to all these different communities. I love Emily in particular because it's a town of about 700, 800 people and 130 people came to the show. So it's like…
Trygve Throntveit:
That’s incredible.
Tane Danger:
That's a good, exactly. It's like one in seven people in the town came to this event, which is amazing. But just as you were saying, that issue of whose town is it Right, was kind of there. And it was a thing. People really talked about, people who live there year round and are there when it's good weather and bad weather, not on the weekends. But then people were like, but this is part of what our identity is, is that there are people who identify with this place and care about this place, but maybe they aren't on the ground the same way as much as we are. And so people talked about that and it wasn't that at the end of the day, everybody was like, oh, well that's solved, but they had a chance to have some of that out and then you turn it into comedy. Well,
Chris Egert:
How do you take that next step then?
Tane Danger:
Oh yeah. I mean, so in this final show that we're going to do, and some of the improv had this, there's a sketch in the show about Emily Minnesota, and it's about how long do you have to live in a place before you're really from there? And in the sketch there's a piece where it's like, oh, congratulations. You've passed the 40 year mark. You are officially a member of this town, and here you get your certificate and you get now access to all of the town secrets that the people who are only here for the weekend. So you get to have a little bit of fun with that.
Chris Egert:
Listen, that's a real thing for anybody who's grown up in a small town. If you weren't born in that small town and you may have been there for 50 years if you weren't born there, there is a weird disconnect. And you always have this feeling that do people, I'm not, people really think I live here. Or particularly then if you factor in somebody who is up there just to go to the cabin, then that makes it even more complex.
Tane Danger:
Yeah. So it's real. Yeah. I will just say there was a woman at one of the shows, trig would always facilitated talk back after the shows, and there was a woman at one of the shows in particular who said, we all want things to change, but we really actually just want them to stay the same. Which is sort of one of those statements that you think that's contradictory and yet that perfectly captures kind of what everybody wants.
Megan Newquist:
Makes sense. Makes sense. Sense. What you guys hoping that people take away from the show. Because I think when they hear improv and comedy, my mind initially went to, oh, they're going to do the “U Betcha” and they're going to make fun of the Minnesota right in us. But that's not at all what you're doing.
Trygve Throntveit:
No. What we want to do is remind people that they have the power in their community to come together, listen to one another, and understand that many things can be true about their community and many things can be true about themselves. They can be very welcoming and also sometimes standoffish. They can feel very welcomed and sometimes excluded. And if you don't take time to listen to people's stories, you tend to put them in categories. And what we want them to understand is they can do this themselves. We were just here to remind them that they can do it.
Chris Egert:
Yeah. Well guys, thanks for stopping by. It sounds fascinating. It's a very entertaining, a great experiment. So we appreciate your time today.
Trygve Throntveit:
Thank you
Chris Egert:
Again. Thank you to T and Trig for a link. To register to sketches of Minnesota, head to Minnesota live.com