Baraboo-born, Milwaukee-based playwright Heidi Armbruster may be having her best season yet. Her Northwoods whodunnit Murder Girl recently wrapped a twice-extended run at Milwaukee Chamber Theatre, and on April 14, Mrs. Christie opens at the Milwaukee Rep.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
The two productions offer a snapshot of what drives Armbruster as a writer: a desire to tell accessible stories that draw you in, then linger long after the curtain falls. In Murder Girl, for example, she spurs the audience to track clues alongside the characters onstage. “It opens the door to everyone,” she says, “and invites the audience to play the game, too.”
That participation, she believes, is especially vital at a moment when live theater is competing with endless at-home distractions. “Right now, people want an event – something you can’t get on your couch in front of Netflix,” Armbruster says.
A similar sense of discovery also shapes Mrs. Christie. Inspired by Agatha Christie’s infamous 1926 disappearance, the play zooms in on this moment of rupture in the celebrated writer’s life, when grief, marital collapse and uncertainty forced a reckoning. Written during a period of personal loss for Armbruster, the piece treats Christie not as a literary legend but as a woman in flux, asking how chaos can give way to reinvention and creative clarity.
Armbruster balances between entertainment and inquiry. She sees genre and humor as invitations rather than constraints – that they can welcome audiences into stories that hold both pleasure and complexity. “Come for the Agatha Christie,” she jokes, “stay for the feminism.”
Armbruster’s more than her pen; in February, she acted in The Reservoir in New York City, where she lived for many years before moving back to Wisconsin in 2020. Her acting background shapes her writing. “As an actor, I write characters I want to play: language-heavy roles with big emotional rants and a lot of texture,” she says. This sensibility is evident in the rhythmic dialogue and strong interior lives that anchor her written work.
Since returning, she’s found Milwaukee theatergoers especially engaged – curious, responsive and eager for work that unfolds as a shared experience. Now, she’s workshopping another period piece she’s written, The Boys from Baraboo, which revisits the lives of Wisconsin’s own Ringling Brothers and will arrive at Next Act Theatre in December 2026. Armbruster hopes to keep collaborating with local theaters to build new work.
“Milwaukee welcomed me so warmly, both as an actress and a playwright,” she says. “Getting to grow these plays here makes me feel really lucky.”
