Click here for audio slide showA 36-piece stage, 17 tall walls, five 16-foot-high Corinthian columns, three French doors... a queen-size bed, one armoire, a phonograph, a black-and-white television (with an "I Love Lucy" episode playing)... bookshelves, books for the shelves, 1950s-era magazines on the nightstand, wisteria vines outside... liquor bottles, eyebrow tweezers, ashtrays, an ice bucket, ice for the bucket — all out of a pair of tightly packed 24-foot-long rental trucks. More remarkable still is to watch the elaborate set for Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" go up in the Plains High School gym it will all come down even more quickly and disappear out the back door.
Most remarkable of all: Since Monday, when the crew from the Montana Repertory Theatre spent 15 to 16 hours driving from Missoula to Plains, building a theater in a gym, putting on a play and dismantling a theater in a gym, they have done it all over again four times.
By March, they'll be doing it as far away as Key Largo, Fla., and before it ends in Lexington, Ky., in April, the set will have been re- and de-constructed by the crew dozens of times and transported in the large trucks everywhere from North Carolina to Pennsylvania to Texas.
"They warn me there's an arc to the whole thing," says assistant stage manager Jessica Veen, who is on her first national tour.
Technical director Aaron "Torg" Torgerson, a veteran of such tours, explains it.
"At first it's ' Oh, I'm so happy to be here, I love all of you, you're all my best friend,' " he says. "The second stage is very polite: 'Could you please move over?' The third stage is... "
Well, the third stage is decidedly less polite.
And that, Torgerson says, is followed by people barely speaking to each other as they continue to load in, load out, drive hundreds of miles together, stay in hotel rooms together, load in, load out, drive, unload, load, stay, leave.
"In the last two weeks, everyone starts to realize it's almost over and everyone will be going their separate ways," he says. "And then it's, 'I love you all n again.' "
By then, they will be almost three months and nearly 16,000 miles removed from their one-night stand in Plains.
But through the blur of cities they hit across the nation, the long-ago stop in Plains will be one of the ones that stand out when the Rep's national tour of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" ends April 27.
It always is.
"We are now officially on tour!" company manager Libby Torgerson — Aaron's mother — announces to loud cheers from the cast and crew an hour before showtime.
Although they've already been to Lewistown and Bozeman, and have 16 performances under their belts, most of those have taken place in Missoula, where all but the four Actors' Equity Association members who play the leads in "Cat" are based.
They'll hit Missoula again Tuesday morning, but only to pass by on Interstate 90 en route to Helena.
There will be no more returns home. They won't see Missoula again until May.
They are, officially, on tour. The Montana Rep has made Plains one of its stops for 19 years, and it is memorable for two reasons. For one thing, it is the only gymnasium they play in; every other venue is a theater, performing arts center or auditorium.
"I really like coming to Plains," Torg Torgerson says. "It's really a challenge to take a space that is not a theater and make it theatrical."
"For Plains, we have to bring lots of extra stuff," says stage manager Jessica Owen. "Our motto is, if we don't bring it, we don't have it." The school cooperates so the Rep can have free reign inside the gym on a school day. P.E. classes work on written material in a regular classroom on this Monday, and the high school basketball teams practiced at 6 a.m. instead of after school.
Wherever the Rep goes, their contract calls for sponsors to provide bottled water and snacks throughout the day for the hardworking crew and cast. But Plains goes way above and beyond.
"It feels like home here," Libby Torgerson says. "All the town ladies cook all this wonderful food for us. It's so friendly, and so typical of a small Montana town."
Homemade snacks far outnumber potato chips, lunch will include a chili-like taco soup made with moose meat plus several salads, and the post-play dinner at 10:30 that night — well, let's just say tour veterans know they won't see the likes of Jean Morrison's roast pork extravaganza very often over the coming months.
"Orange, Texas, puts on a Southern feast for us with this great jambalaya," says Nora Munde
Gustuson, who's in charge of wardrobe and on her third national tour. "Most places, we fend for ourselves. But Plains and Orange, they really treat us great."
Gustuson is one of five crew members who can't take a break once the Alessia Carpoca-designed set is finally up, along with lights and a sound system.
While others in the crew catch a quick nap on the bed on stage two hours before showtime, Gustuson, Chris Torma, Garrett Burreson, Jack Zagunis and Tashia Gates all move backstage to makeup and wardrobe.In two hours they'll be onstage. All have parts in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."
Two little girls on dollies fly back and forth in front of the stage where the crew is hard at work.
Local volunteers to help with the heavy lifting during set-up are always appreciated, and the homeschooled French family of nearby Paradise is here in full force to fill the gap. Charles (16), Ben (14) and Abram (12) are a huge help as the trucks are unloaded and the stage and set built.
Their little sisters, 7-year-old Lydia and 4-year-old Chloe, chip in too, helping Gustuson steam and press costumes and matching shoes to the right outfits. But if the crew can't find chores for the girls, the girls are more than capable of finding things to keep themselves busy, and the dollies make for great fun.
"No surfing!" Katy French, the children's mother, hollers from the bleachers as Lydia tries to ride one like a skateboard.
"The arts council called in a panic," Katy says. "They needed volunteers. My kids help out at community events like this all the time. Everyone knows they're homeschooled, and their schedules are flexible."
The French kids also want to help tear down afterward, but Katy says with that effort likely to last well past midnight, she expects they'll change their minds.
"They have cows to milk at 5 a.m.," she says.
The French kids won't be allowed to stick around and watch "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" anyway.
"The subject matter," Katy explains. "Next year I understand they're doing 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' and they can watch that. But not this one."
Ah, the subject matter n it comes up often during the course of the day as Jean Morrison, Libby Torgerson and others wonder what kind of turnout they'll get in Sanders County for "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."
Tickets go for $12.
"If we get 200 people I'll feel fortunate," Morrison says seven hours before showtime. It's her job, she says, to bring theater to Sanders County. It's up to residents whether they want to take advantage of it.
The posters she has put up around the county — the only advertising the county arts council can afford for the play — are, Morrison says, "suggestive."
They show Heather Benton, who stars as Maggie, lying on a mattress in the satin slip she wears on stage for most of Act One.
"Before there were 'Desperate Housewives' there was Maggie the Cat," the poster reads. "Before there was Tony Soprano there was Big Daddy; and before 'Survivor' there was 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.' "
Moreover, two of the play's themes revolve around the torment Brick (played by Butte-born Rick Prigge) feels over his never-acted upon homosexual desires toward his late friend Skipper, and the sultry Maggie's hurt at being ignored by her alcoholic and conflicted husband.
"It's provocative," Morrison warns the crowd — it looks like she's gotten her 200, and likely a few more — moments before the start. "I hope you aren't surprised."
This will be a "clean" performance, Owen, the stage manager, reminds the actors at the cast meeting.
"There are two versions that we do," Libby Torgerson explains. "One is the way it was written," with liberal use of profanity. The other — the clean version — takes the profanities out. "A lot of the tour goes through the Bible Belt," she says, "and they don't want to hear" the Lord's name taken in vain, for instance. If they do, she says, "they stick on that and don't hear anything else that is said."
It's up to whatever organization sponsors the Rep's performance as to which version a community gets. Missoula, Helena and Butte got the play as Williams wrote it; Lewistown, Bozeman, Billings and Plains opted for the "squeaky clean" adaptation.
"We want to make it easy on the sponsor," Torgerson says. "They've got to stay in a community after we leave."
Actor Eddie Levi Lee, who plays Big Daddy, lets one profanity slip, but otherwise the cast avoids the language some might find offensive.
Editing their words on stage isn't the only challenge on this night. Forty chairs have been set up in front of the gymnasium's bleachers, so the first row is about three feet from the inch-high stage, and Jayne Muirhead (Big Mama) says the close proximity of the audience changes everything. "I'm not used to having the audience that close," she says. "I had to reign it in to keep it in this place."
Every venue presents a new challenge. The next night, at the Myrna Loy Center in Helena, Torg Torgerson knows they'll have to downsize. The stage is too small for the set as it's designed; the crew will have to figure out how to make Brick and Maggie's room tinier and the actors will have to adjust to the smaller and more crowded space on the fly.
Plains' 19 years as a stop for the Montana Rep comes courtesy of two of its citizens who have passed on.
Clifford Rittenour, a Plains banker and businessman, left money to establish a fund in his name after he died. Plains attorney Alex Morrison (Jean's husband) administered it. Some money went to the University of Montana, and some of that to UM's various arts endeavors, in exchange for an annual visit to Plains by the Rep.
"The Rainmaker" was the first play they performed in Plains, and drew 750 people.
When Jean Morrison's husband died four years ago, he left enough money to keep the Rep coming back to Plains for eight years. This year's $12 ticket cost, she says, is an effort to "join the world in what things cost. What I want to see is for us to be able to make enough to establish our own endowment so we can bring it here every year."
Until then, year No. 19 in Plains is over. Performance No. 17 on this tour is over. What went up must come down, and by the wee hours of Tuesday morning you won't know the Montana Repertory Theatre has even been here.
Unless you talk to one of the 200-and-some people who watched the play. Most of them gave "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" a standing ovation.
Reach reporter Vince Devlin at 1-800-366-7186 or by e-mail at vdevlin@missoulian.com. Reach photography editor Kurt Wilson at (406) 523-5244 or by e-mail at kwilson@missoulian.com.
|
 |
 |
Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)