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Fringe File #2: INTERVIEW: Amber Bjork on The Winding Sheet Outfit and Returning to Fringe

by Basil Considine -

A promotional image for The Winding Sheet Outfit’s show at the 2026 Minnesota Fringe Festival.

If you were placing bets on which regular presenters will sell out at the Minnesota Fringe Festival, The Winding Sheet Outfit is a pretty good bet. Since its debut at the Minnesota Fringe Festival in 2013, the group has been both one of the festival’s most frequent presenters, and one of its most dynamically creative. Each show is intricately crafted, filled with details bound to provoke post-show conversation, and exquisitely crafted for the space. Many an audience member has gone down a Wikipedia rabbit hole afterwards, to explore some of the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story threads that often appear.

This year, TWSO is presenting a show whose name might give you pause: A Confluence of Magical Arseholes. (Yes, you read that right. No typos or copy-and-paste errors.) The Winding Sheet Outfit’s Amber Bjork spoke with the Arts Reader’s Basil Considine about this show.

What is this show like in terms of narrative? What’s it like for audiences to experience this show?

Artist liaison, arts administrator, and theatre visionary Amber Bjork. Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Fringe Festival.

The show doesn’t really follow a narrative. Rather it focuses on characters and relationships between those characters. You’re going to meet some of the more famous members of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, as well as some notable members of the Irish Literary Society of 1900. Loosely.

We’re playing fast and loose with factual characters and just letting our good times fly. There will be a lot of silliness, some extraneous music, and one very dirty poem that keeps popping up again and again.

I think if people are familiar with our work, they will be surprised to watch us push the envelope into some new territories.

You’re a founding member of The Winding Sheet Outfit. How and when did this ensemble come to be? What is the story behind the name?

I was taking a lot of physical theater classes in 2011/2012–Sandbox Theater, SITI Company, Kari Margolis, Jon Ferguson, Mondo Company–and really wanting to work on more physical and collaborative theater. I wasn’t getting cast because companies were either close casting, or only had roles I couldn’t fill–men, dancers, acrobats–and I thought, well fine. If I can’t work with established companies, I’m not gonna wait. I’ll make my own stuff! So I grabbed Kristina Fjellman who’d been taking some of these courses with me and asked her if she’d like to start playing around with sticks and sheets.

A promotional photo for Birds of Passage (2012). Photo by Kristina Fjellman.

Our first production was Birds of Passage in the 2013 Minnesota Fringe, about an immigrant sea crossing. There were some deaths in the story and I always thought it was pretty and sad how early immigrants would bring their best sheets with them to America–not only to have nice linens, but also because if they died on the crossing, they would often be sewn into their best sheets for burial at sea. This was their shroud, also known as a winding sheet.

We also used large swaths of fabric to represent the sea in that show, so the “sheet” aspect felt appropriate. I chose “outfit” for the double meaning–both as the worn shroud and to double for “company.” Little did I know it then, but the name was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Our shows are often memorial shows for lives that were here and now gone.

What are some of the “other” (non-Fringe) lives of past shows by this group?

We don’t have much of a budget for theater rentals and such, so we mostly do festival work–both Fringe and Horror Fest. We consistently had shows at Horror Fest from 2019 – 2023. I also like to let my husband (Derek Lee Miller) show off his skills with some of our work. As a carpenter, he helped showcase our work at Art Shanty Projects for two years by building us some of the most beautiful shanties. And since he’s really great with audio/video recording and editing, he’s helped us record stories for Dread North podcast as well as shoot and edit some short films for us (which you can find on our YouTube channel).

And, of course, there’s our traveling tent show, The Theater of the Tiny Clandestines–weird stories for audiences of eight in a 10×10 pavilion tent. We haven’t done that one in a while, but it always threatens to come back.

A promotional image for the 2024 incarnation of The Theatre of the Tiny Clandestines, featuring Reverend Matt of Reverend Matt’s Monster Science.

Each show that The Winding Sheet Outfit has produced has been quite different from the others in terms of historical narrative and focus. How did this one come to be, and at what point did you say, “This is the show we want to do in 2026?”

I always like to give myself a new challenge for every show. Make a musical. Check. Do something absurdist. Check. Do a collab. Check.

This time I wanted to do a “boy show.” I didn’t know what that meant other than most of our shows have been very feminine-leaning either in subject matter or execution. Edward Lear could probably be argued to have a male subject, but it was still a very soft show. I wanted to do something a little more bawdy and tell a ridiculous story and use boys as a silly excuse!

Mark Benzel and I have worked together in the past, but it’s only recently that we found ourselves in each other’s playful orbits again. And then there’s Michael Rogers who I just adore and have been wanting to work with. So last year, Mark and I were at Michael’s Fringe show and I asked him if he wanted to make a boy show with Michael. I had Mark’s yes at the start of the show, and by the end I had an idea, and after the show I hunted Michael down to get him to say yes. It wasn’t hard.

My goal was just to have a good time making something. So that’s the story this year. It’s very much about the joy of being around the people you love and having a good time. We need it right now, so that’s the story we’re telling right now.

What is the rehearsal process like for this show – when did you start, where do you work, etc?

Ridiculous. Every day. I can’t pay people enough for what their talent is worth, but I can pay them to have a good time in my rehearsal room, and they really are. I’ve literally hurt myself laughing more than once. Will that translate to the stage? If even a fraction of it does, I’ll call that a success.

We’ve been working in my home studio since mid-June. My process includes a lot of gestural work, generative writing, and collaborative scene building. I have quite a few returning Winding Sheet regulars, a few really strong members of the improv scene, and a couple really great clowns.

My rehearsal room is a safe space where folks can swing in every direction–they can present vulnerable ideas, beautiful dance, the first banal thing that comes to mind, or the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen in the very best sense of the word. There are no wrong answers, no limits, and they’re often surprised at what I choose to put in the show. I’m usually just looking for “the most human thing” to weave into the tapestry in an artful way. That’s not something that I can predict, it’s just what happens that day. Some folks refer to it as “beautiful accidents.” They’re my favorite things.

Tell us about a favorite moment in this show, and why.

I love a fourth wall break. It’s a Winding Sheet staple, and there’s plenty of them in this one. [For example,] We found a really filthy poem by Aleister Crowley–the character that Michael Rogers is playing in the show. And we’ve created this moment where Sam Landman enjoys reading this terrible, dirty poem aloud while Michael sings along with it. It’s just ridiculous and bawdy and over the top in the best way. It goes on until I need to head onstage and shut it down before it gets worse. But of course it gets worse. Gloriously worse.

You’re working with many familiar faces on this show. What are some examples of your using the ensemble makers’ unique talents in this particular show?

Dan Linden is so willing to play the most ridiculous characters I throw at him in the most beautiful way, so after Mark and Michael, he was the next person that I needed on this venture specifically for a very silly role.

Josh Swantz has been around since the first Winding Sheet Show and plays one million instruments, so when I wanted to play with music in this piece, I knew I wanted him on the team.

And Sam Landman  is a jack of all trades–writer, actor, musician, improviser–and great at all of it while saying “yes” to all suggestions in the room.

TLA ensemble member Heather Bunch is joining us again! After living six years out of state she was toying with moving back to Minnesota and I told her if she could make it back before rehearsals started that I’d put her in my show. Half of that promise was because she’s an amazing clown and actress and of course I always love working with her. But half of that promise was just to get her to move back home so we can ALL benefit from her in our obit again!!!! She’s bringing her amazing voice and character work and just slaying the comic work here.

What’s up for you next after Fringe? 

After Fringe, I’m looking at a year of remounts and I’m really excited about that! It means I can still be involved in theater, but with less heavy lifting.

This fall, Transatlantic Love Affair will remount 5×5 at The Phipps. I’ll be on tour with Simple Machines’ production of Say When. Theater of the Tiny Clandestines will make an appearance at Dread the Halls this December.

There’s a couple of other productions I loved working on that have yet to publicly announce their remounts, but those are coming up in 2027. And I’ve been talking to the cast of a classic Winding Sheet show to see if they want to apply to the 2027 Fringe lottery with a remount (resounding yes). But before all that, I’ll also be appearing in a second show this Fringe season; I’m pleased to be part of Mike Fotis‘s show Tech, a long-form improv show about an ill-fated Fringe tech rehearsal.

Basil Considine
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