Missoula Children’s Theatre Comes to Harlem

Missoula Children’s Theatre Comes to Harlem

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Saturday night, right here in my own home town of Harlem , I attended a live theatre production. Along with two hundred excited parents, family members and friends, I watched thirty children, cast in a variety of roles, cavort across the stage in “Pinocchio”.

But for me the fun began the previous Sunday afternoon when Dan Watson and Lydia Jane Graeff, a team of directors from the Missoula Children’s Theatre, drove their little red truck into my driveway, and came inside to meet me and to see what was to be their home for the following week. I showed them to their rooms so they could unpack and take a few moments to relax before their work began.

Missoula Children’s Theatre has been around for forty years. If co-founder Jim Caron, out of a job and on his way to Oregon , had not broken down while driving his ancient VW van near Missoula , MCT might not exist. While waiting for repairs, he noticed a poster advertising auditions for the musical, “Man of La Mancha”. “Why not,” he thought, “just for fun”. He found himself cast in the play and during the run developed a friendship with Don Collins who played the lead.

After “ La Mancha ” closed, Caron and Collins formed a company to present theatre for children. Their efforts in Missoula were such a success that soon Jim and Don were receiving requests from other communities to perform for their children.

When they started they cast adults in the plays, with children only playing appropriate roles. In the winter of ’72 the company was booked to travel to Miles City for a production of “Snow White”. Jim and Don were hesitant to take seven children on that long trip over the icy roads. They took the radical step of driving to Miles City ahead of the rest of the crew, hoping they would find seven children willing to spend the week of preparation and be part of play. Four hundred fifty children showed up for auditions and the present form of Missoula Children’s Theatre was conceived.

Today hopeful directors audition to be part of Missoula Children’s Theatre. They are intensively trained and placed in teams of two which travel throughout the United States in little red trucks with the MCT logo prominent on the doors. International teams take theatre around the world. My new friends, Dan and Lydia , rookies with MCT, are touring “Pinocchio” to Montana and Wyoming communities. In their truck they carry their clothing and personal effects, the scripts, lighting, props, costumes, make-up, sets and all the equipment needed to create a stage wherever they go. Every Sunday they arrive at a new home. They cast up to sixty children and rehearse throughout the week. On Saturday they raise the set, run through a dress rehearsal, briefly rest and on Saturday evening the kids perform for the community. After the play, Dan and Lydia tear down the set and load all the equipment back into the truck. Early Sunday morning they head down the road.

For some communities MCT is the only live theatre to which their children are exposed. This is the second year that the newly organized Harlem PTO has sponsored MCT’s appearance. Last year sixteen children participated. This year thirty children signed up for the hard work of rehearsals every night after school. This is not just simple entertainment. MCT states “the primary goal, indeed the organization’s mission, is the development of life skills in children through participation in the performing arts.” I know how hard our kids worked, because I saw their directors drag through my front door chewing their hair at the end of the evening, looking like road kill. Yet each day, Dan and Lydia returned to school eager to help the kids build the next layer of competence.

Finally the big night arrived. I went to the high school to see the play performed on the same stage where we had plays when I was a student. The old gym, with its stage on one side, is the only remaining part of old Harlem High. I sat through the performance, a grin pasted across my face, delighted at the bravery of the kids. I silently cheered for each young actor and held my breath whenever the action on the stage came to a halt, evidence of lost lines. But these children did it. They pulled it off. The show was a triumph.

After the play, parents took thousands of photographs, locking in memories forever. Dan and Lydia , together with a few community members, broke down the stage and packed the entire set and all the equipment into the little red truck. We came back to my house to celebrate and over a feast of pizza, talked theatre and life (and aren’t they the same thing) until midnight. Sunday morning I waved good-by to my two new friends as they headed down the road to their next gig.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

April 21, 2011
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Boys Noise

an almost true story
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Boys Noise

Little boys make noise, all kinds of noise, noise all the time. In the space of one hour, dredging canals and moats and constructing forts, in the sandbox, any small boy imitates sounds of dump trucks, jets overhead, barking dogs, steam shovels, armed battalions, and weird green outer-space creatures. This typical boy behavior is allowed and encouraged.

Meanwhile, in the parlor, surrounded with reproductions of Victorian furniture, anti-macassars and ceramic figurines, his little sister is quietly setting the table with the miniature china tea set or tucking dolly up for a nap or turning the pages of a book and silently reading the story to herself. That little girl in the starched and ruffled pinafore is me. I play quietly, with decorum, as I have been taught. I stay clean. I pick up my toys and put them away when it is time for tea. This quiet behavior is praised and encouraged. I am “good”.

I tiptoe to the window and peer between velvet draperies, see the sandbox, trucks and shovels and pails strewn everywhere. My brother is tearing around the back yard, trailing half a Sahara of sand, loudly machine gunning enemy troops hiding in the hedges. I purse my lips. Boys are so noisy.

Now that I am grown, I am acutely aware that making noises is a fundamental skill I lack. Nowhere is this more frustrating than when I must explain to my mechanic, over the phone, the strange noises my car is making. He always asks.

“What’s it sound like?” the mechanic, we will call him Ralph, asks.

I hold the phone in silence, pucker up my mouth, practice different configurations with my lips, consider how to reproduce the particular noise my car is making, struggle to bring the sounds from my throat. Fear strikes. I am paralyzed. Girlhood training overrides necessity. I cannot utter a sound.

Finally I gather my courage and resort to words. I am good with words. “Ralph, remember when you were a little boy, when you took a clothespin and attached playing cards to the spokes of your bicycle?”

Silence on his end of the line. Maybe Ralph is remembering. Maybe Ralph is scratching.

“It is kind of like that noise, but then add a low growl like a dog defending a bone.”

“Might be the pulley attached to the serpentine belt is sticking for some reason. Or could be the AC unit. It’s probably the AC unit. That will cost more. Course it could be the catalytic converter. That’s pretty expensive too.” Ralph began adding up the possibilities. He belched.

“My car doesn’t have air conditioning,” I admit.

“You don’t have air?” He sounds incredulous. I feel personally defective for not having air conditioning in my car. Mechanics always do that to me.

Wednesday I pull in front of Ralph’s Repair and Body Shop. By now my van not only clicks and clacks, and growls but also is possessed by shrieking banshees.

When I open the shop door, Ralph tilts back in his chair. “No, it don’t sound like what you said.” With his mouth, he imitates cards pinned to bicycle spokes with a small additional growl. “Now here’s what it really sounds like.” The noise which emerges from Ralph’s mouth could be a recording of my van driving in, it is so perfect.

I grimace, “What is wrong with it?”

“Don’t know,” he answers, and gets up, hitches his britches and spits. “When it makes that noise, it’s usually a pulley, but I won’t know which one until I tear it all apart.”

Helplessly, I hand over my keys and prepare for a long wait.

After many hours, numerous parts and several hundred dollars, Ralph glares at me as he hands me my keys and receipt. “You mighta called when it first started sounding like this.” And again, he orchestrates the noise my van was making when I first began to worry that something might be wrong. “So why didn’t you call then—it would’ve saved you a lot of money.”

I stare back mutely, but politely. “Childhood.” It is all I can think to say. I turn to leave.

“Your speedometer sticks, did you know that?” Ralph asks. “Sounds like this.” And as I left the shop, he made the sound of a sticking speedometer.

Sondra Ashton
Feb 4, 09
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