'A front porch for Whitefish'

The Daily Inter Lake

Carolyn Pitman wanted her life to be an adventure.

Spending nearly 30 years managing a community theater group might not sound like the ideal way to reach that goal, but Pitman said the job has been well suited to the adventurous life - and given her a dose of stability on the side.

Pitman, 60, is the executive director of the Whitefish Theatre Company, based in Whitefish's O'Shaughnessy Cultural Arts Center.

She is overseer and caretaker to a full slate of theater productions, concerts, a film series, an education program and a number of special events each year, plus the more than 600 volunteers who were involved last year in everything from ticket-taking to acting. The O'Shaughnessy Center itself also is the responsibility of the organization.

"I try to keep the focus on the whole picture, there are so many aspects," Pitman said. "I think that's my main role.

Pitman has never had aspirations to be on the stage herself. That's how she found herself, decades ago, in the role of the business-oriented thinker, someone to think pragmatically in an organization of artists.

Pitman's initial plan was to be an English teacher. After growing up in Ohio, she earned her bachelor's degree in English from Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio.

Following her yearning for something different, she worked with the Red Cross in Vietnam in 1969.

To be close to some military friends, when she left Vietnam she moved to Washington, D.C., taking a teaching job in a nearby Virginia school. During that time she met her future husband, Doug, when he was a medical student at the University of Vermont.

As an option to military service, Doug Pitman signed up for two years with the National Health Service Corps, working on the eastern edge of Wyoming in the medically underserved town of Lusk. They grew to love the West in that short time.

"Lusk was the middle of nowhere, but those two years there were very important," Carolyn Pitman said.

In Wyoming, the Pitmans met Dr. Chet Hope and his wife, Carol. Chet Hope and Doug Pitman decided they would open a medical practice together, and in 1977, the two families moved to Whitefish.

In 1978 she was looking for something to occupy but not dominate her time, as she had 1-year-old Aaron at home. Pitman attended a meeting for interested community members, who were investigating the possibility of forming a theater group.

"From that we decided to try and put on one production," Pitman said.

With fundraisers that included the traditional bake sale, they staged a weekend of shows - Woody Allen's "Don't Drink the Water" - at Whitefish Central School.

"It was a huge success," Pitman said. "People loved it."

It gave them the optimism to forge ahead and they incorporated right away as Whitefish Community Theatre. The group had all the right ingredients to succeed, Pitman said.

"We were a mature group, we had an experienced, well-organized board of directors, and we pursued things in a professional manner from the beginning. We pursued it with the idea that it would have a permanency."

She was the right fit for the manager role.

"I was the only person involved who didn't care about being onstage," she said.

She did the bookkeeping and organizing tasks - "I was taking care of the pieces of the puzzle that others didn't care about."

It also suited her conservative nature, which has proven important to the current success of the company.

Though the organization hasn't shied away from making significant moves - sharing in the renovation of Whitefish Central School auditorium in 1986, hiring its first full-time artistic director in 1988, building the O'Shaughnessy Center in 1998, adding giant-screen film capabilities in 2003 - Pitman said she's always tried to make sure the group doesn't move too quickly or put itself in a financial bind.

"We're very cautious," she said.

Even so, the Whitefish Theatre Company has grown exponentially. The company sponsored about two dozen events in 2006 and has a paid staff of six, including the recent addition of April Vogel as education director to foster the growth of the company's fairly new young actors program.

The O'Shaughnessy Center is booked almost daily, sometimes with multiple events in a day, and Pitman said the facility could be used more if it weren't for space limitations.

Knowledgeable volunteers, and sometimes even O'Shaughnessy Center patrons, provide the ideas for scheduling the music and film series. Pitman mostly gets involved when it's time to negotiate contracts and schedules.

Working with artists, in the theater or musical arenas, has been mostly a stimulating experience, she said. Few members of the local theater community are prone to prima donna behavior, and only rarely have the touring musicians been difficult.

"It's a very interesting group of people who walk through that door," she said. "It's exciting to work with people who don't always see the world as other people do."

It's a good thing Pitman loves her job, since she spends a fair bit of time at it, usually more than 40 hours each week. Besides working, Pitman said she's still very involved in the lives of her adult children - Aaron, 30, Adam, 27, and Elizabeth, 23.

Aaron followed his father into the medical field, earning his master's degree in physician assistant studies from Augsburg College in Minnesota.

Adam is an aspiring filmmaker and is putting the finishing touches on a Bigfoot-themed horror film, "Paper Dolls."

Elizabeth, a Whitefish High School soccer standout, recently graduated from the University of Puget Sound, where she was on the soccer team, so Pitman has spent a bit of time on the soccer sidelines.

Travel and time with friends fill out the rest of her life.

Though she admits she has few hobbies, her job is a fulfilling - and adventurous - way to spend her days, Pitman said.

"I think of this as a front porch for Whitefish," she said. "People can get together here for a variety of experiences and the performing arts. It's also my opportunity to enjoy the community and meet people who enjoy the performing arts in a personal way.

"I like that front-porch image."

Reporter Heidi Gaiser may be reached at 758-4431 or by e-mail at hgaiser@dailyinterlake.com.