At random 8/31

Sunday, August 31, 2003

Enjoying myself the other night at the premier performance of CCPA singers in the show "Side by Side by Sondheim" in the enlarged and renovated Fox Theater, I thought to myself, "What other small community has such a rich tradition and promising future as Nevada has in drama and music." I'm currently doing some research on Cottey's history since 1959, and have reached the early 1970s, when my family moved from Minnesota to Nevada (Missouri, that is). I distinctly remember my first days teaching at Cottey and meeting all my academic colleagues. I also recall vividly the opening efforts of Ron Seney, Paula Thompson, and Van Ibsen (who went on to make quite a name for himself ) to start a community theater, with the first "Bushwhacker Review," in the old Welty's Sales Pavilion. My wife, whom I'd known for 12 years, suddenly came out of the closet and announced herself a theater buff. Then as now, she didn't fancy herself a performer (perish the thought!), but she was a whiz with a Singer, so she volunteered to "do" costumes. Which she did through the CCPA's leanest years. We drove to Joplin many times, looking for appropriate fabric with which to make costumes. With the CCPA budget so tight, and before Missouri Arts Council shed its grace on our theater group, Ginny had to make 25 cents per costume suffice. When things got tighter, she was told she needed to cut back. Now, how can you cut back to less than a quarter dollar for a costume? And then there was the building itself. The Founding Fathers and Mothers of CCPA took Welty's Cow Sales Pavilion, just down the street from the First Baptist Church, named it the Cow Palace (after the fabled San Francisco convention hall), and held the first few years‚ worth of shows there, until it was finally torn down, to make room for . . . nothing. From there it went to Saint Francis Academy, the Nevada High School, Marmaduke Park and the Nevada Fair Grounds in the summer, and Cottey College. Each place had its own charms (Cottey College, for example, had a leak-proof roof), but for Nevadans who were part of amateur theater from the very get-go, Welty's remains the most memorable. Talk about uncomfortable and suffering for art! The Cow Palace was a large theater in the round, with long, backless wood benches. When it was very hot (and in the Cow Palace, hot didn't come in any other way), there were a couple of stand-up fans that turned the play into what sounded like lines delivered at an old airport: "I have always" -- whirr! -- "depended on the " -- whirr! -- "kindness of strangers" -- whirr! But it was the cold weather that brought out the kindness of strangers. Once, members of the audience were so visibly shivering that Ginny went back into the costume storage and brought out warm 19th century frock coats, lion costumes, shawls, etc. that she loaned to those whose noses had turned blue. Still another time, I think it was the jail scene in "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail" a freezing cold mouse ran out onto the stage, and keeled over dead from the cold, to the dismay of the audience ("Maud, check your program.. Do you see that mouse in the cast of characters?") From those modest beginnings, a band of enthusiastic Nevadans, including my wife Ginny, came forth and kept the theater, now known as the Community Council on the Performing Arts, alive and thriving for 25+ years. When I look at this year's CCPA Schedule, I don't see "Arsenic and Old Lace" or "Our Town" or "The Man Who Came to Dinner," the old familiar stand-bys which are guaranteed to raise laughs at the predictable places. Instead, I see The Guys ("a woman writes the obituary of a troupe of firemen lost during 9-11"). Tuna Christmas ("comedy sequel to "Greater Tuna‚"), "Step Back and Look" ("musical history of black music in American black history month"), A Night of One Acts ("two comedy‚ one acts"), and Murder Mystery Night. This seems to me a program by a bunch of people who recognize the importance, not only of keeping their own skills fresh, and of pleasing the people in their audience, but also of challenging them with the unfamiliar. So, do yourself a favor and volunteer your services to CCPA. Do what our daughter Jessica did when she was 8: take tickets and serve lemonade. Wield a hammer (to build sets, that is), bring in needed props, paint a stage flat. Or just make out a check. CCPA will thank you for all of this participation. After all, CCPA is one of the things that makes Nevada, Missouri, unique.