We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Seamus Schwaba a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Seamus, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I started Sugarloaf Theatre in 2022 when I was 15 years old because at the time my hometown of Winona MN really didn’t have any other community theatre organizations that were active. Community theatre is such an important and wonderful thing. It can give adults a place to belong and stay engaged in their community, and it can give teens a valuable learning experience. The mission of Sugarloaf Theatre is to provide positive theatre environments for all ages in the Winona community, and I am so proud of the fact that within less than three years of existing, we have been able to spread joy to over 1000 people!

My entire goal behind starting this was to use theatre as a way to bring happiness to the people of Winona, and thanks to the amazing donors, actors, production team members, audience, and board members I’ve had the chance to work with, that goal continues to thrive.

Sugarloaf Theatre does two full scale productions every year including a summer musical and a winter theatre for young audiences show. I have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to have directed all our musicals and theatre for young audiences shows. We also do a 24 hour theatre event every year, where we write, rehearse, and perform three original short plays in a period of 24 hours.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’ve been doing theatre for my whole life, and I’ve been lucky enough to have had many different types of diverse experiences when it comes to theatre. The positive experiences I’ve had were life changing and wonderful, and I was able to learn from the more negative ones. When I started Sugarloaf I was excited to take everything I’ve learned and use it to the best of my ability to be a good director.

I think one of the things I’m most proud of is just how kind everyone is to each other in our casts. I’m so grateful to have had the chance to work with so many amazingly talented, but also genuinely good people. By the end of every show we’ve done our cast is like a big family, and I’m so enchanted to be able to work with all these wonderful human beings!!

I’m also really proud of the fact that audience members usually enjoy our shows. For example, the idea behind our annual theatre for young audiences show is to have our adult and teen actors perform in a show that is specifically designed to make kids happy. We’ve done two theatre for young audiences shows and both of them were a hit with the kids in the audience. They laughed and smiled through pretty much the entirety of those shows. We’ve been lucky enough to work in partnership on both of these shows with Bluffview Montessori School. They have let us use their space for Theatre for young audiances shows and in exchange we’ve offered their students a free school time show. We also have offered performances that are open to the community to see, so that families could take their kids to see the show.

With musicals the purpose is to do a show that all ages can enjoy! We’ve done two musicals so far and both of them have performed for sold out audiences of all ages. This summer, we are working on our third annual summer musical. The show is Through the Looking Glass and it’s based on the classic novel by Lewis Carrol.

Overall I think I’m most proud of the fact that Sugarloaf Theatre has been able to make so many people happy in the wonderful community of Winona. It’s such a gift to get to create theatre that spreads joy in such a beautiful city like Winona!!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

A week before auditions for the first theatre for young audiences show Sugarloaf ever did, I broke my knee by accident, and I had to direct the rest of the show on crutches. Halfway through the show, my stage manager had to drop out because he had some other commitments that he hadn’t planned for that would keep him from being able to help with the show. It was definitely a bit stressful trying to direct a show while navigating school, knee surgery, and not having the help of a stage manager, but I’m proud of the fact that I was able to get through it. Our costume’s designer for the show was able to step in and help with a few things our stage manager was supposed to do, and that really helped a lot too. Unfortunately we also had an actor that had some unplanned stuff who had to drop out too, so one of our other actors stepped in and was double cast in two roles. I was proud of the fact that we were still able to bring the show to life, and make do with what we had even though not everything went as planned. It just shows that in theatre anything is possible when you work as a team!!

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I didn’t really have a cofouder for Sugarloaf Theatre, but I can tell the story of how I met my our musical director, Nathan Graff, for our summer musicals this year and last year. I directed/am directing both of these shows and he is a delightful member to have on our production team. He’s a super upbeat guy, and he always has a very laid back personality making him super easy to work with both this and last summer.

When I was a little kid, I used to take tap dance lessons at the same place Nathan did. He’s a few years older than me, and I remember I really looked up to him. He was always sort of a “cool older kid” to me. He was always super kind to me. I remember he would always make time to chat with anyone who wanted to talk to him for a few minutes regardless of how busy he was. In dance there were a lot of tap steps I struggled with and Nathan actually made time to meet with me a few times one on one and help me out. Several years later when I was looking for a musical director for last year’s summer musical, I heard that he had gotten his music degree recently so I reached out to him and asked if he would be interested in working together, and ever since than I think him and I have made a great team!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/sugarloaftheatre
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sugarloaftheatre/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SugarloafTheatre

Image Credits

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