Since our first production in 2001, we have been refining our approach to the collaborative creation of theater. A company led by playwrights who embrace collaboration with their fellow artists, we have created dozens of original works of theater in the last 20+ years. Here’s a look at what we’ve created:
Shows Produced at the Crane Theater
A Very Electric Christmas
December 2023
Join us this December as nimbus returns to The Heartland in another jolly holiday romp. Will Trae rediscover love in his hometown? Will all of Snowflake Falls’ secrets be revealed? Can Christmas be saved? Go see A Very Electric Christmas and find out for yourself!
The Burning of Greenwood
June 2023
A story not just about tragedy, but of the entrepreneurship, work ethic, community building, and resilience of a people to build not just financial, but cultural and spiritual wealth in the face of Jim Crow.
Nimbus Presents: A Count Up to Christmas
December 2022
When an Overworked City Person finds herself dumped and unemployed right before Christmas, she heads to a Quaint Small Town in the Heartland to regroup. But things in the Heartland aren’t all jolly and bright as the beloved town Christmas fair is in danger.
The Red and the Bright
December 2021
For our landmark 50th production, nimbus is creating a new world of myth and mystery.
In a village in a world that in some ways is very much like ours, and some ways very much not, things start happening that aren’t supposed to happen.
The residents of Motherpine Station prepare for the Crossing - an annual ritual it is their ancient duty to lead. Only the pilgrims have stopped coming, and something more terrifying has arrived instead.
A Life of Days
November 2019
Fearing the unthinkable, a family flees into the wilderness. Fifty years later, park rangers Callie and David stumble across an unbelievable discovery.
While on a survey expedition, they encounter Vira, a woman born and raised in nearly complete isolation. Over the course of several days, they nurture a fragile trust as she shares her extraordinary story. Ultimately, they are faced with an agonizing choice: reveal her existence to a world that she has never known and cannot grasp, or help keep her hidden on a planet that is running out of space for secrets.
May 2019
From his birth in the little town of Washington, Maine in 1880 to his embalmed body making appearances in sideshows, traveling attractions, and eventually the cinema, Elmer McCurdy’s mortal coil did a lot a shufflin’. He pulled on his boots, saddled up his horse, and proceeded to take a long, tragic stumble on the wrong side of the law. From the minute he plopped a ten dollar Stetson on a five cent head, it was destined to end with a case of lead poisoning. But for Elmer, dying with his boots on was just the beginning.
The river becomes sea
December 2018
Every family has its secrets. Cornelius Aloysius Gaines and his daughters are no exception.
Inspired by Euripides’ The Bacchae and set in Reconstruction era New Orleans, playwright Josh Cragun has populated the Crescent City with a complex collection of ambitious, passionate people. When an exiled scion of Cornelius’ prosperous and respectable dynasty returns, the secret she carries could tear the family apart. Pride, racism, resentment and ambition flow together like a river to the sea.
And the water is rising.
LUDLOW
November 2017
The year is 1913. Progress runs on coal, but the immigrant miners from southern Colorado are being squeezed beyond endurance. They work the seam while corporate forces arrayed against them spy, manipulate and disrupt, crushing any hint of “union.” Yet the workers and their families lean on one another, wait, hope…and plan.
How far will the company go? When will the pawns realize that together they are strong? But the chess board squares are all coal black in Las Animas County, near the River of the Lost Souls in Purgatory. And the flames are getting closer.
Redemption
May 2017
Offenders. Shawn and Sandra have a little gate cash, an overworked case officer, and the weight of their turbulent pasts. The system says their debt is paid, but the eyes of a daughter, of former friends, of passersby, say the ledger is still in the red.
nimbus' Mitchell Frazier and Josh Cragun examine the stories of two Twin Cities lives facing the uphill battle of reentry. Of hopes buffeted by written and unwritten rules, haunting memories and rooted resentments, mistakes that continue to ripple outward even after years locked away from society. When the system, the stigmas, and even the good intentions of others conspire to hold them back, what will these "offenders" do to restore their self worth, renew relationships, and find forgiveness in a landscape of fear, mistrust and doubt?
The Kalevala
October 2016
Shows Produced at 1517 Central
November 2015
November 2014
September 2013
December 2012
March 2012
The Year of Magical Thinking
May 2011
June 2015
April 2014
May 2013
October 2012
December 2011
February 2011
February 2015
December 2013
March 2013
May 2012
Accidental Death of an Anarchist
October 2011