When process is enough: One artist reframes what success feels like
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Kurt Engh wants to fake his death.
It’s the kind of witty joke you’d expect from him if you’ve met Engh — but most people have yet to learn his name.
“‘Posthumous’ is the best marketing,” Engh explains, “Because I think people would then be like, ‘Oh my gosh. I didn’t even know this person was around! We have to go see his show.’”
Kurt Engh is a renaissance man of the theater: he’s a performer, playwright and producer with his own theater company, “Running Errands.”
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His flagship enterprise is a quarterly new works showcase, also called “Running Errands,” that offers a space for theatermakers to try out new ideas and network.
He’s inspired by directors like Mike Leigh and Simon Stone — known for their collaborative and experimental approach to the craft.
Engh similarly likes to play with style and form. His 2024 play “Only Ugly Guys” is best described as a gay “anti-rom-com,” framed as an anthology of interconnected stories. It also features multimedia elements like projections and pre-filmed videos.
“I want to find a way of flipping theater on its head in a way that is fun and hilarious and interesting. Not just like this, depraved, dark, stark theater production,” he says.
To write, he often visits coffee shops like Disco Death Records in Minneapolis. This past winter, however, the record store/cafe served as a grant writer’s office more than a playwright’s refuge.
“I really wish people understood the economics of theater,” Engh says. His upcoming fall production — a bare-bones show in a 100-seat venue — will cost around $40,000. He’s already secured a $10,000 grant, but the rest will need to come from additional funding, individual donors, or ticket sales.
Theater isn’t cheap
Engh’s entrepreneurial spirit has been a constant companion. In 2019, he adapted the Norwegian book “Naive. Super” for the stage because he thought the nonprofit Norway House would let him use their space for performances if he wrote something Norwegian, which they did.
He’s always enjoyed wearing both artistic and managerial hats.
“I also was just like that kid who just gathered all the neighborhood kids together and made Goldilocks and three bears or like, ‘Let’s recreate the Grinch for our parents and do like a 30 minute production and charge a quarter,’” Engh says, admitting he’s a bit of a control freak.
“Now I think, like, that did just come from, like, this engine that I had inside.”
Scripted from the start
Engh grew up in the theater.
He recalled seeing a production of “The Wizard of Oz” at Giant Step Theater Company in Lakeville.
“I think in some ways, I just never found something that excited me more than that. And then I've just been kind of like, chasing that dragon, for as long as I can remember,” Engh says.
He began performing with Giant Step not long after seeing that “Wizard of Oz” production, and by his teens, was working professionally with companies like The Children’s Theatre Company, Theatre Latte Da and The Guthrie Theater.
After graduating from Texas State University in 2016, Engh moved between nationally recognized institutions, including the Public Theater in New York, where he worked the front desk and the Guthrie, where he served as executive assistant to the managing director.
“He’s both sort of a generative artist … as well as a pragmatist,” says Christopher Hibma, an arts and culture curator and producer. Hibma and Engh met at the Guthrie while Hibma was serving as the interim senior producer.
“[Engh] was very involved in the theater’s work around diversity, equity, inclusion and the anti racism work, and was integral in activating all of that work,” Hibma recalls. “He didn’t just show up to work and put in his nine to five and leave. He really brought himself into the space.
A few months later, Engh is sitting at FIKA Cafe at the American Swedish Institute. He has a part-time job at the museum as an executive service coordinator, so he visits the cafe often. He’d recently learned he didn’t receive a fellowship from the Playwrights’ Center he’d hoped for, despite being a semifinalist.
“I was really looking forward to it,” Engh says.
Lately, much of his energy had gone into raising money — chasing sponsorships, building institutional relationships, writing grants.
“I’m administratively burnt out,” Engh says with a chuckle. “I guess what I am looking for right now is like some job security, or like a creative home … so I’m not doing it all on my own.”
When proposals trump playwrighting
“It does take quite a bit of time,” explains Danielle Kincs, a longtime friend of Engh’s who reviews all his grant proposals.
Also in her 30s, Kincs understands the drain. “Artists spend the day writing grant applications, and that's a day that takes away from, you know, their artistic work.”
For Engh, it’s been more than just a day spent staring at a computer screen, crafting a well-told proposal. He hasn’t worked on one of his plays in months.
“What I am doing right now is unsustainable,” Engh says. And he’s far from the only artist feeling this way.
“I have a couple of friends who are artists, and they came to that point where they were like, ‘OK, I’m working 40 hours a week, I have a good job, and maybe I like it, maybe I don’t — maybe I hate it. But I want to invest full time in my art. And how do I do that?’” Kincs says.
In her 20s, she went through her crisis as an artist while living in New York. She feels that this “1/3-life crisis” is prevalent for lots of people.
“I think that’s something that rings true for a lot of artists at this stage.”
Another friend of Engh’s is Madeline Wall, who runs her own theater company, “The Birth Play Project.” They are both members of an young producers group that tries to meet monthly.
“A lot of it right now is complaining back and forth about the difficulties [of producing],” Wall says with a laugh. “The challenge and the joy is that [theater is] a deeply collaborative art form.”
Wall, who is 27, says that she’s recently examined her relationship with theater, and has dedicated her artistic energy into the company, rather than a career as a director.
“Because my relationship to theater is more limited right now … I found that to be really healthy for me,” Wall says. “But I also have underestimated the mental transition of no longer hoping to make my money in it. It has some lingering effects that I have not become fully aware of until recently.”
Turning the corner
Christopher Hibma, now in his 50s, recognizes the frustration Engh is grappling with. A mentor of Engh, Hibma, has offered steady guidance in recent months.
“I think Kurt is really struggling with what many artists who are in midcareer are struggling with, which is wishing that they had support from institutions ... and as a result, [have had] to carve out their own space to create their work,” Hibma offered.
He is also quick to point out, however, that for the majority of the world, it’s far more common for artists to self-produce and sustain their work without institutional backing.
“We have so much to learn in America from our counterparts and colleagues who have been doing this very successfully from the Global South,” Hibma says.
As the fatigue from grant writing and glad-handing set in, Engh made a decision: by the end of March, he’d take a break from his administrator role and return to his creative roots.
He says he’s making time to work on a new play — about Republican women — both for the personal artistic challenge, and intentionally choosing a subject he knew would be difficult to fund.
A few weeks later, Engh seems more relaxed and at ease with where he’s at in his career. At Bar Brava in north Minneapolis, he sips on wine and noshes on patatas bravas — a kind of potato tapas dish — as he reminisces about good times spent there.
“We had our closing night party here,” Engh says, referencing his play “Only Ugly Guys,” which premiered last year. “I think it’s also this amazing place in Minneapolis that has excellent taste, but is also just this local neighborhood bar.”
He also admires the James Beard–nominated bar for being both a brick-and-mortar space and a supporter of pop-up events.
“I’m trying to think of theater as like a pop-up performance,” Engh says between bites. “It would be amazing to just have a brick-and-mortar theater that is always running different theater companies or something.”
Process, not product
His vibe is more retrospective now — likely because he celebrated his 32nd birthday in late March.
“It’s the oldest I’ve ever been and the happiest I’ve ever been,” Engh says. “That’s what I said when I blew out my candles. It’s very true.”
His birthday party was a revolving door of guests — the earliest of whom he promptly put to work plating and decorating, reluctant to let go of his producer instincts.
“I think where I’m at now, where I feel much more optimistic, is I have just renegotiated my expectations of what this next project, next few projects, what this company will be,” he says.
While still driven to succeed, Engh has reassessed what that means over the last few months.
“I’m thinking a lot about my directing professor in college, Jeremy Torres, at Texas State University,” Engh says, remembering how Torres always emphasized the value of process over product.
“It’s like product is the play that you’re seeing at the end of the semester, but process is all the rehearsals we’ve had, all the questions we’ve had, all the reading we’ve done, all the work that we’ve done. Right now, success, to me, is like, just being able to be in process with things, which is very hard when there are so many deadlines … and it’s so much money and so many people. But I’m just kind of trying to be okay more with the process of things.”
The art of creating might just be enough for Engh.
