By Abdimalik Ahmed
As we bask in the glow still radiating from our transcendent closing night of Your Hello to My Goodbye, I couldn’t help but nostalgically contrast it with my experience after the closing of The Place I Return To. I checked to see when exactly that was, and when I saw that it was August 12, 2023, I realized how opportune a time it was for a retrospective. Two Cornucopia Productions shows; two days since the closing of one, and two years since the closing of the other. This is my tribute to them both.
In early 2023, I was less than a year removed from my first time on stage as Hamlet in the 2022 MN Fringe. That show was incredibly fulfilling, and because it came right on the heels of my first acting job in Apple TV+’s Little America, I felt like I was finally an artist. It’s silly how we seek validation for that term, but I couldn’t help it. It was particularly important because in all my deeply poured over dreams of my eventual life as an artist, I knew that I would create work and it would be under this banner that I had thought was so clever for a decade already. It was so good that I couldn’t waste it on any old thing too early. I had to be serious and give it what it deserved.
When the producer applications opened for that year’s Fringe, I had the insane idea that I would write and direct my own show for the summer festival. I learned very directly the year before that all that was standing between me and my dreams was leaping for them, so I said bismillah and took a crazy jump. When the application asked for a producer name, I felt like it was maybe time. I had decided that this was the rest of my life. I wrote “Cornucopia Productions”.
This name is a play on words. A cornucopia is a horn of plenty, a symbol of abundance and nourishment. Fruits and flowers spill forth with enough for everyone to have their fill, and then it keeps going. I learned what a cornucopia was through The Hunger Games when I was a kid. Suzanne Collins turns it on its head, making it an inorganic, finite husk filled with weapons for the express purpose of culling. Like crabs in a bucket, these children scrambled for their survival by trying to claim resources before they were depleted, and that is precisely what led the majority to their doom, every time. I thought that if this was the dystopian version, then the wholesome cornucopia must exist in our world, or at the very least it can. I wanted to be a part of that.
I am from the Horn of Africa, also a horn of inexhaustible abundance. My people are rich with verve, dripping with a sense of life like few I’ve ever seen. I always dreamed that I could facilitate that potential. And in the same vein, it was also a prayer for myself that my story not be bound, but that I am always alive in such a way that I can mine for art and story for as long as I live. That this would only be the beginning.
When the producers for that year’s Fringe were announced however, Cornucopia Productions was so far down the waitlist that this idea left my mind. I accepted a request from my Hamlet director to play a part in her new adaptation that summer, The Crucible.
While I was traveling around England with my brother for weeks in June, trying to learn my lines in time to match everyone else’s stride when I returned for tech week, I got an email from the Fringe Festival: I was in! And I had 24hrs to respond before they called the next person on the waitlist. I agonized over the choice of either being sensible and saying no because I had nothing prepared, or just jumping again while maybe making the worst decision ever. I didn’t want to start Cornucopia on the wrong foot. I took every single one of those hours to ask advice and mull it over, and with fifteen minutes to spare while battling a spotty connection on a train, I said yes! And then took a stressed bite of my cheese and onion pasty.
I was in The Crucible. We had an incredible run. On the night we closed at the cast party, I told those who were still around at 1am that I would be debuting a fringe show in less than three weeks. I had no idea what it would be about, but I hoped they would show up. For the next two weeks, I quickly settled on what the show would be: a chair, a mic, and a spotlight. Going back through my poems, I identified a clear progression of feelings across five years and knew my work ahead was to select and order the poems, and to write the connective tissue.
My opening night was essentially my dress rehearsal, but it went really well! I had a woman named Marie who loved and related to the show, and when I said I was going up to Duluth the next day for a weekend on the north shore with my family (opening night was the eve of my 22nd birthday), she invited me and my family onto her sailboat in Duluth to “feel the wind in our hair” like she does. It didn’t work then, but I’m planning to take her up on it someday. When I got back from our incredible weekend of beaches, mountain trails, and campfire smores, my shows were mostly pretty small, a handful or two of strangers, as I was reluctant to share any of the details with my friends. I guess it wasn’t the big production I wanted people to remember as the start of this. Some friends did show up, however, indignant. Said, my writer friend and inspiration, showed up as a surprise mid-run, and we chatted for a while in the night air, and it meant so much. My closing show saw a whole gang of my friends, it was incredible to hear the laughs and reactions in the dark and know which faces I would see when the house lights went up. Salma, Suleiman, Filsan, and Ahmed, my Little Water/Crucible castmates. Flowers, pictures, conversation. A sigh of relief.
When I said yes to the Fringe, I did it to put into practice my motto of “just start, jump.” I didn’t want to have regrets. But I couldn’t help being terrified from that moment of making trash and being forced into putting it on stage because of my strict pre-determined showtimes, and that burden of expectation was on me the whole time until the moment the run was done. But that was also the point. I had my back up to a wall, so trash or not, I knew I was leaving the summer with an original show having been on stage. Cornucopia Productions was born. I’m on the other side, I think I did really well, and I am so incredibly proud of myself. I have no regrets.
Over the next year and a half, my theater life took a pause as I did my senior year of college, and then started working pretty consistently in local commercials/tv as a production assistant. I had started to become antsy with the pause in my creative life, and after moving out in January 2025, I was in the state of mind to start prepping a short film. In February, The Qalanjo Project programmed a series of events including a Somali film series, a conversation with Professor Abdulcadir Ahmed Said, and a two-day intensive theater workshop led by Warda Mohamed. I attended all three. Each relit a different spark in me, but by the end of the weekend workshop, I was with two people who went on the same journey and felt the exact same way: Sabrin Nur and Wasima Farah. We felt like it would be a sin against our wave of passion to let it crash without having first ridden the wave. Having participated in the Fringe a couple of times before, I always have my eye out for those application dates just in case I want to make the leap again. I had been mulling it over myself, but I brought it up as a possible way we could channel our joint creative energy, and we all jumped together!
We met at Soomaal House of Art one day soon after to talk through what we wanted to make. Wasima and Sabrin expanded the circle, and in came Maryan Yusuf, Nadira Hussein, Nadwa Hussein, and Muna Hussein. Our winding conversation kept circling back to family; our relationships with our siblings, with our parents, and with ourselves as we grew in and out of the expectations and roles placed upon us and by us. It was amazing to see how our stories overlapped, and how even with all the differences in our timelines, these questions were still relevant to us all. The short film I was working on at the time was about three roommates who have to turn in their key in the morning before starting the rest of their adult lives, but they had this one last night together in which they had to define what the rest of their lives would look like with each other as friends. We decided to recycle that structure for an older sister leaving and her family exploring their reactions to that. We also found the title “Your Hello to My Goodbye”. We all put in producer applications right then and there, and like the last time I was staring at the empty producer name box, I felt like Cornucopia Productions was finally right again for this project. I knew that it might not be the one selected. But it’s about the leap.
On the day of the lottery, it turned out that 4 of us had been selected, and so we had to choose one name to collectively call ourselves. I proposed Cornucopia Productions, and I was so warmed to know that it was a name that people besides me would want to get behind. We got right to work, dividing ourselves into roles and committees. I raised my hand for writing with Maryan and Sabrin, and directing with Nadwa. Because we were so late to the Fringe process, our producers gave us writers a truncated timeline we tried to keep, but kept needing extensions on.
We had to figure out so many things at once. We were still outlining the story and rushing to deliver single scenes for each character for auditioning purposes. We went into casting which was such a blessing for figuring out everything else. We started rehearsals at the top of May which was the most difficult month for me in the whole process as I was spending several hours a week blocking scenes with Nadwa as directors, then several hours at rehearsal with the actors delivering that blocking to them, and still all the rest of my time writing to make sure we had enough material to keep rehearsals running smoothly. Both writing and blocking finished around the same time later that month, and a massive burden was lifted. It was just about directing performance and helping steer the ship now. We also learned that we would be at the Mixed Blood Theater, which was incredibly exciting for me. The Place I Return To was staged there. Mixed Blood was now kind of the place I returned to. It was like I was conducting an experiment and there were now fewer changed variables, which meant I could make a clearer throughline for Cornucopia’s twinned beginning. I could more easily track what developed. I now really wanted to know what a return would look like.
The best part of this rehearsal process is that I still hear about so many things that I didn’t experience even while being a participant. I was part of the kaleidoscope, where even if we swirl around and try to see it all, our mirrors catch each other’s light in infinite ways, patterns and colors unfolding boundless everywhere that we miss. It felt like the manifestation of cornucopia, where standing in its entrance will feel like a flurry, but being enveloped by its wave is a reminder that there will always be enough for you and everyone alongside you.
As the show dates drew near, I felt really excited to invite everyone I knew to the show, something completely fresh. I felt no reservations about it. This is due to the amount of hard work everyone else poured in to make it the beautiful thing it became. From the very beginning, people entered the circle interested in what was going on and wanting to participate, and that circle always had more spots through the rehearsal process as we collected new members to our media team, our props team, and our acting team, all filling in holes shaped perfectly for them and making the picture that much smoother. I wanted everyone I know to be in on that, this feedback loop. I could hear the early echo.
Due to the constraints of Fringe scheduling, our opening night was essentially a dress rehearsal, everyone working hard to smooth any kinks as they arose. I was so proud of how smoothly it went despite that. We still felt an outpouring of love, and we had notes on how to make it even better. I turned 24 on the day of our third show. Fringe is special to me because of this timing. I played Hamlet on stage in my very first Fringe show on my 21st birthday. I went to Duluth during the run of The Place I Return To when I turned 22. On my 24th birthday, I merged both experiences by going to Duluth and then being back in time for the 10pm show. This was the first night I got to see the show as an audience member, and it is going to remain one of the best birthdays of my life. Every note was executed so well, the performances were stellar, the tech team was so smooth, and I was able to just sit and enjoy it anew from the front row. I can’t shower everyone with enough praises, and my fellow audience heartily agreed. They hid a cake from me and brought it out in the warm night air, lighting the candles and singing the song. I was standing next to Salmaan and Sarah who came to see the show. I went home with a bursting heart.
Two nights ago before our closing night show, I remember everyone peeking out from our little looking spots and being overwhelmed by the size of the crowd. Faces we recognized. I could see my brothers and sisters. So could the others. Nadwa was watching from the audience for the first time this time, her sisters as sisters on stage. Earlier that day we were told that we won an award and asked to attend that evening’s award ceremony to receive it. We knew our production quality was trending upwards and took real confidence in that–no time for doubt. I took my spot on the landing halfway up the stairs, no longer having to direct entrances, just watching the professional cast move in and out and find moments of silent play in between their scenes. I sang along to them singing their songs, and I mimicked their deliveries sight unseen from memory. The show ended and I could hear silence until the bows began, as if they were hoping for more. It was touching. The crowd’s cheer was rapturous. Nadwa and I said some beaming words through our beaming smiles and we packed it all up to head to the Golden Lanyard Awards.
We sat there, taking up a couple of rows as Your Hello to My Goodbye won Mixed Blood’s Venue Award for most tickets sold at their venue. In quick succession we were called back up and presented a Golden Lanyard award for Audience Choice. I was now holding two awards for Cornucopia Productions in my hands. It felt surreal. I was getting a video holding both in my hands when I heard again “YOUR HELLO TO MY GOODBYE” and a roar as we won Spirit of the Fringe! We rushed on stage, Nadwa and I holding all three between us as we posed for a triumphant photo and the audience gleamed. We started this in such a blaze, and it didn’t slow down until we took the crown (that rhyme just was calling to be used). We ended the late night with Somali food (a thematic choice), the leftovers of which I am eating right now.
On the day of our final rehearsal, Wasima had the idea to chant before we start a show as a way to tap into our characters and roles on stage, and then after the show to tap out and leave the judgement on that stage and release back into ourselves. The chant we landed on was “hello, hello, hello!” to start a show and “goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!” to end one. A play on our show’s title. When we stood out there in the setting sun after the final show, glorious, surrounded by our loved ones and chastised by Fringe for our volume, we said “goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!” to close out this spectacular run of our multi-award winning play.
Then, we opened something new with “HELLO, HELLO, HELLO!”
ABDIMALIK AHMED 