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All right. I'm here with Michelle Menke, with the Bigfork community players. How are you doing? I'm doing great. How are you? I'm great. Thank you. So you guys have a production of Steel Magnolias coming up soon? We do? Yes. Yeah. When's that running? Okay, well, it starts a week from today, so it starts on the, on April 19th, and it's Friday.

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Saturday and Sunday, April 19th through 21st. And then April, 26th through 28. The following weekend, our Friday and Saturday night performances are at 730, and our Sunday performances are matinees, and …

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All right. I'm here with Michelle Menke, with the Bigfork community players. How are you doing? I'm doing great. How are you? I'm great. Thank you. So you guys have a production of Steel Magnolias coming up soon? We do? Yes. Yeah. When's that running? Okay, well, it starts a week from today, so it starts on the, on April 19th, and it's Friday.

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Saturday and Sunday, April 19th through 21st. And then April, 26th through 28. The following weekend, our Friday and Saturday night performances are at 730, and our Sunday performances are matinees, and they're at 2:00 and they're all at the Bigfork Center for the Performing Arts. Awesome. Yeah. The big for community players is the community theater group and big four.

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Yes. and you guys do a fall production. And this is your spring production? Yes. We usually do a fall winter and spring production, but since Covid, we haven't really brought the winter production back yet. But we're seriously considering for next season. Oh, nice. Having fun? Yeah. So how did you guys land on doing Steel Magnolias this spring?

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Well, it's kind of a convoluted story. I normally direct the fall production. this last year we did, Neil Simon's Plaza suite, and, and then another, member of the group, does the spring production, but unfortunate. He had a few things with his business happened that just is demanding a lot more of his time, and he just didn't have the time to direct the spring production.

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And so it was kind of a last minute thing in January, and it was like, I can't do this. And everybody's looking at me, you know, what can you do? And I'm like, normally I would have been reading scripts and, you know, order you know, getting all prepared. And literally we need to audition people in like a week if we want to be on time.

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And so we started going down the list of past productions, and I directed Steel Magnolias for The Players nine years ago, and it was one of our better, well, most well-attended, shows. And, since it had been nine years, the, the rest of the board and I, we just kind of decided, well, let's do it again. And it was nice because having directed it before, I didn't have to start from scratch on everything on my sound effects and blocking and set design and all of that stuff.

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I still had everything on my computer. So it, you know, being a last minute thing that kind of saved me. Yeah, I'm familiar with it a little bit, being familiar with it. Yeah. Knowing what's what's coming around the corner on this and and not having to reinvent the wheel. So, yeah. So that's how we ended up doing it.

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I don't I, I've got two people from the original cast when I did it, in it again, but they're playing completely different characters and, so of my, my six ladies in this cast, three of them are, seasoned actors with me. I've done many performances with them and three of them are brand new, never done it before in their lives.

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And they're doing great. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. One of the last times I talked to you, it was, I'm going to forget the name of it, but it was, play where you had, it was like a mystery. And there were like, three guys. That was hound of the Baskervilles. Yes, Sherlock Holmes. So that was like, you had all males in your leads, and.

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And this is very female heavy. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm. I'm I'm all over the place. Yeah. How does the Baskervilles was? Three guys playing 14 characters, including the women. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that one. That was exhausting. And that one we normally spend to two and a half months rehearsing. We spent four months rehearsing that show because it was just insane, but, but, yeah, doing cast with all women is very different than men.

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and men want to please, when you're directing them. Women want to give him put. And lots of it. But, you know, it's all good. It's all good. I'm happy with how the production is coming out. we move into the theater on Sunday, and that's when we'll build the set and dress the set and all of that and get the lights programed and, and, get the sound effects hooked up and so forth.

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And then, Monday will be our first rehearsal for them, especially for my newbies who have never done this before on stage. Lights in their eyes, miked up. Yeah, the whole thing. So Monday going to be a real adventure for them, and I'm looking forward to seeing the looks on their faces when those lights come on. Yeah, it's a big change.

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yeah. What are so does it take a long time for people to adjust to that when you know, I tend to you know, it depends on who's directing. I mean, I tend to keep my lights down a little bit, because a lot of the lights that are up there can get cranked up so high that they're just blinding.

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And that's just all you see is that blinding light. And I tend to keep mine. I like to use more of the colored lights and so forth to backlight my actors and so forth. So they look a little more three dimensional. so the bright white lights, the spots and so forth. I tend to turn them down so they're not blinded by the lights.

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And then I, I think it tends to kind of keep everybody a little calmer too. Yeah. Yeah, totally. So what draws you to Steel Magnolias? Like the story. Oh, I've just loved the story since 1989. I can remember seeing it. I didn't see it in the theater, but I saw it as soon as it came out on. Yes, I'm old VHS tape.

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And literally, I had this big old pillow, and I was just laying on the floor up against this giant like, beanbag pillow watching it on TV. And I, you know, I didn't know anything about it. I knew nothing about the story. I knew nothing about, you know, the big serious scene in it and so forth. I was bawling, oh my God, it was just it caught me totally off guard and I just couldn't stop.

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And it was just. And I've loved it ever since, you know, and I literally I'm a terrible flier, but I do it because sometimes it's just the only thing you can do is you have to fly. And so I keep certain movies on my phone to watch when I'm flying. And Steel Magnolias has always been one of them.

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Oh, that'd be a great movie. It's a great airplane movie. That and Matt Damon's The Martian. Oh, yeah. True. Yeah, yeah I don't well, I guess it could be a good airplane movie if you don't cry in the middle of true. Well, I at this point, I mean, it still gets me, but I'm I'm a little more desensitized to it.

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I can tell you my my actors are not. I mean, when we get to that last act, you know, act, act two, scene two. And and Merlin just falls apart. Everybody's crying. And, I mean, they really are crying, you know? It's so emotion. It is very emotional. And of course, I'm sitting there trying to go, okay, we're doing good.

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Stay in character. Stay.

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Yeah. It's such a great story. I don't remember every little detail the movie has. I haven't seen it in a while, but I just remember it being like a really great story about, like, family and like, like the bonds that, like, women have with each other. Exactly the difference between the, the movie and the play. but a lot of people don't know it's the play came first.

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Oh, I didn't know. Yeah. Robert Harling wrote the play, in honor of his sister who passed away. so it's basically her story, and, and he brought it Off-Broadway and then immediately got picked up. I think the story goes that like within two weeks, it runs, it got picked up and got brought out to Broadway, and then that's when it got noticed.

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And they turned it into a movie. And, he's actually in the movie now. A lot of people don't know this, but Robert Harling, the author, plays the preacher that marries Jackson and Shelby. Oh, interesting. In the big wedding scene. Yeah, he's got a little cameo in there. but. Yeah. So. But the difference between the play and the movie is him.

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Obviously, with the movie, you can do all kinds of wonderful locations and indoor and outdoor shots and all these different things. Well, you can't do that with a play. Everything takes place in Trev's Beauty salon and there are no men. So all of those characters, all those male characters, you know, Sammy DeSoto and and and drum and you know, everybody, all these men, they don't exist in the actual I mean, the their names exist because the ladies talk about them, but their characters never come on stage during the play.

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Oh, interesting. It's all women in the salon. Yeah. So a lot of the stuff that, you know, a lot of the stuff that you saw in the movie that was female oriented, they talk about it, you know, they give it a verbal description of what they did when they did this. And you go in your mind, you go, oh, yeah, I remember that scene.

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And when they carried it out, you know, but they just actually just talk about it in the play. Yeah. I think that's so interesting. I guess that you guys might not do a lot of plays where you switch, scenes in between or backdrops or anything like that, but it's very hard. It's very hard. And, you know, like when I did hound of the Baskervilles, that was I think that's probably the only play that I've done where we had multiple scenes, but that was only because that whole thing was like, I like to say it was kind of a cross between, Sherlock Holmes meets Monty Python because it was just really wacky, you

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know, like that. And so all of our, our sets were very portable and they were tiny. It was mostly like furniture pieces that we were rolling in and rolling out to represent different rooms. and that's really I think that's about the only play I've ever done where we've kind of had multiple locations, everything else has just been set in one room.

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That's how most plays are are written, is just one location or sometimes like Plaza Suite. I directed last fall was in two different rooms. It was in a hotel suite at the Plaza Hotel. And so there was the living room, and then there was the bedroom, and we had, half wall in between them. And so the actors, including myself, I directed it.

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I was also in it. I had to pretend like there was a solid wall there. So when the character I was acting with went into the bedroom and I was in the living room, I couldn't see him even though I could, but I had to act like I couldn't see him. So I was kind of talking, hey, so can you hear me?

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You know, because he's over in another room, so, you know, it's just the things you have to do. I didn't know you also acted. Oh, yes. And do you act, as often as I can? You know, I like that I end up directing, and sometimes it's it it's difficult to act and direct and direct yourself because you want as a director, you want to be able to stand back and you want to see everything that's going on on stage in, in, you know, in, in your mind in that you can see that these people are in the right place and they're facing the right direction.

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And maybe you want them to do a certain movement. It's really hard to direct if you're up there with them, because you're just seeing from your point of view at that point. So, I don't I try not to do it, but Plaza Suite was a unique play for us. it was Neil Simon, and it was actually three different stories.

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So it was a what we call a three act play. So there was an act, an intermission, an act, an intermission, and then and the final act. And so I was just, I was in the second act and it was just myself and one other actor and so I was able to direct the first act and the third act and then some.

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One of the characters, one of the actors from one of the other acts, was able to direct my act. So, yeah. So that that worked out just fine. Yeah. And she had a head directing experience, so it was good. She was actually in the third act. So. So I directed her and she directed me. Yeah. that seems like that'd be kind of a cool part of being in, like, a community theater group that, like, you have all these people and, like, it's not super strict about, like, who's the director and, like, kind of easy to move those roles around.

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It is it is, you know, we're community theater. we're not paid. We're not professionals by any means. and we, you know, we're open to anybody who wants to give it a try. I never directed before until I started with the community Players back in 2013. And so, I, you know, I just once kind of mentioned it to somebody that was directing me.

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I'd really love to learn what you do. And she says, pick a play, present it. And if you want me to co-direct it with you and teach you, I will. And we did. And my very first play I ever directed was the female version of The Odd Couple. And, yeah. And so instead of Oscar and Felix, it was Olive and Florence.

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But Neil Simon actually wrote two different versions, so we didn't we didn't make it up. We didn't twist it. There just actually really are two different versions of that play out there. And she co-direct. She co-directed with me. And, from then on, I just I loved it. And so like I said, I'm just 12 years, 12 plays, something like that.

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Yeah. Do you like Neil Simon plays? Is that when you go for I do, I tend to try to go for things that are more tried and true. and because, you know, audiences a lot of times won't go to see a play unless they know something about it. You know, if it's a name they never heard of, it's harder to get people to come in and see a play.

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And for my actors and for myself as well, when I'm acting, the more people that you have what we refer to as butts in seats. But since seats that you have, the more the actors can hear the audience laughing, snickering, crying, plotting all of this stuff. And if there's not a lot of people in the audience and you barely hear, you know anything, you just you don't get any energy from it in your, your, your performance just kind of tends to just go blah, you know?

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So I try to stick more with the tried and true that I know that the people out there are going to have heard of this title and say, oh, I've always wanted to see that, but I don't want to fly to New York for it. So I'm going to go to see it in big for. Yeah. And so yeah, I, I tend to pick things.

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The hound of the Baskervilles was a, was very much out of my wheelhouse. I had never done anything like that before, but I knew I wanted to do a Sherlock Holmes play. And so I just started reading scripts and watching YouTube videos of other productions. And I came across this one, which actually came from London. It was a, kind of an improv comedy group in London, called People Like Us.

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And, they, they had written this version of Sherlock Holmes The Story of Sherlock Holmes so old it's out of copyright. And that's why there's you're able to do so many different versions of Sherlock and get him to do so many things, because you don't have to pay copyright fees and because of the state, his state, and so forth.

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and so people like us had kind of written this version of it, which was, like I said, very much Monty Python, type version of it. And I watched the video and I was just laughing so hard. And I'm like, this is nothing we've ever done before, but I want to give it a try. And, we had a ball, had an absolute ball.

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It was hilarious. It was really funny play. Yeah. That's cool. You guys are always doing something fun. It's springtime now, so I know you guys aren't going to do anything again until the fall, but if you has anybody interested in joining you guys, how does that process work? Well, just I tell people to like our Facebook page, and our Facebook page is big for community players.

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Dash BCP. make sure you put the BCP in there because there is another page out there that somebody in our organization created 15 years ago, nobody knows who. So therefore, you and I password and we can't get Facebook to take it down. So we basically I basically had to create a whole new Facebook page for us. and so everything regarding the players is posted on that.

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If you like us, then you'll automatically see the audition notices pop up. Whenever any of the directors have something coming up. They'll you'll see the audition notices, and then you'll start seeing promotional shots and so forth from rehearsals. And then you'll and you'll see that they're, you know, the date and times of the performances. So that's, that's the best way I do have any, you know, I've got a Gmail, account for the players and I've got like 400 names, email addresses in it.

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So I do do an email blast on it. But I'm, you know, I don't have any way of getting direct feedback on that as to how that's actually working. So I mostly rely on the Facebook. Yeah. post and everybody, like you said, everybody is invited. Whether you've done it before or never done it before. As I said, 50% of my cast this time has never done it before.

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if you, you know, if you have specific talents that you want to bring to us, like lighting or sound or, you know, anything, construction, costumes, you know, anything like that, we need people to do everything. So you don't you don't just have to be on stage. You don't just have to direct. There's. And we're willing to train as well.

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So when I started doing sounded lights, I'd never done it before, so I had to learn. So it's, you know, that's what community theater is. It's for the community to come in, not experience people to get hired on. It's the community. Come in. We teach. Yeah. It takes so many different kinds of people to make a theater runs.

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Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, you've got, you know, somebody that that has to, to design and, and, design the programs, you know, and our tickets and our posters in the marquee signs and, you know, everything. So, you know, and and somebody that's good with social media, I'm terrible at it. Yeah. I actually turned it over to one of my actors who's also the president of our board of directors.

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this round, Charlotte Vaillancourt. And she's been handling all of the Facebook postings and so forth for it, and she's been doing a fantastic job. Great. well, you mentioned since you've had some newbies in this play, I was just wondering, like, how are they taking the lake? I mean, it's it's a pretty emotional play. It is.

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And, yeah, it it gets them, you know, when we get to that second act or the second scene of act two and they're all, they all go, oh, I'm going to be worn out. You know, it's like, yeah, at some point in time you do need to you need to kind of pull on your big girl panties and get through it, because you're going to have to do this six times in front of an audience.

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So, I mean, they're getting there. They're doing they're doing fine, you know? And then of course, the gal that plays Merlin, who has that big mental breakdown thing in that scene and so forth, she's like, I'm only giving it like 50% right now because I give it 100% for every single rehearsal. I will just I'll be dead. She's like, can't do it.

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This is draining enough. At 50%. I'm like, that's fine, that's fine. Just as long as you're going to have to start doing it. Tech week. Yeah, yeah. You got a that's I, I haven't done any kind of theater production but I did. This is a weird comparison. I did marching band. Oh yeah. Dance in color guard. And then I did color guard.

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Oh, and I have a show that's so cool. Yeah. So I remember them told me back then, they're like, they would call it marching it when you do something halfway and they're like, but it's show night or, you know, there's a show tomorrow, so you're going to have to do it. Slough have to give it everything. Yeah. You're all sweating.

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Yeah, yeah. Oh, man. Well thanks for joining me today Michelle. This was fun. Thank you. and yeah, you guys can see their production of Steel Magnolia starting next week at the Bigfork Center for the Performing Arts.