Backstage at the Backstage
Photos courtesy of The Backstage Theatre
All of Summit County’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. Luckily for us, what’s playing is most often a comedy. Indeed, Breckenridge’s Backstage Theatre’s artistic director Christopher Willard has declared this season, “The Season to Laugh.” Willard has spent the past two seasons honing the fine art of program selection, finding plays to match the wild and adventurous — and jolly — spirit of the community. He chose excellent plays to perform this season, including a regional premier, a creative children’s fantasy, passionate family sagas — all with loads of humor to rival the joyous exuberance of the natives — including a musical reinterpretations of Reefer Madness, based on the 1930’s classic drug-culture, camp comedy, about pot smoking that was meant to be an instructional film.
Just in time for Thanksgiving and running through January 19, the play is Over the River and Through the Woods, about grandparents and parents and a kid who wants to move away from home. Over the River is co-directed by Christopher Willard and Wendy Moore, who ran the Backstage, with her husband, Bob, for decades. Joe DiPietro, whom Willard calls the Italian Neil Simon, wrote the play, which focuses on a close-knit Italian-American family. DiPietro also wrote I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change.
“It’s the perfect show for the holidays, its all about family,” says Wendy Moore. The cast will include not only Bob Moore, but also their daughter Missy, who is an actress in Denver. “I’ve never been on stage with Missy,” Mrs. Moore adds.
Willard says he planned the Season to Laugh because audience surveys and Backstage supporters asked for it, and Moore understands. “I think they were saying they’d like to forget their troubles for a little while,” Moore explains. “I like comedy; it challenges me. As they say, ‘dying is easy; comedy is hard.’”
She also praised Willard’s ability to do comedy. Willard silently took the compliment, dryly adding he initially took the Backstage job because he was looking for a title that had both “artistic” and “director” in it. Willard came to the Backstage in 2004 after working for ten years at the Arvada Center near Denver, managing the facility, directing the children’s program and producing and acting in plays at other city venues. He won a Marlowe award for best children’s production.
Willard brought experience and passion to the Backstage. “I’m a huge fan of children’s theater,” he says, and has made an effort to increase the production quality of kids’ shows. The Hobbit, performed last year, “included costumes so good, it was scary.” For audiences this December, Willard wanted something for all ages, and particularly something more accessible for preschoolers. He chose David Wood’s The Gingerbread Man, a simple story with lots of audience participation. “The audience will be asked to help heal the Cuckoo Clock, for example,” he says, adding there is plenty of humor for adults as well. The sets were designed by Bob Moore and include enormous props such as a giant rolling pin, radio, and a big teapot, the latter being the home of an old witch. For this bigger than life production, the Backstage performs in the Ten Mile Room at the Village at Breckenridge.
Back at the Shamus O’Toole Town Theatre, Willard and Murphy Funkhouser, a Backstage regular, are directing A 1950’s Backstage Holiday, a musical revue running December 19-23.
In February, Willard’s selected comedy is the laugh-a-minute play by James Prideaux, The Housekeeper. “It’s an odd-duck romance in the WASP genre,” Willard joked.
Following that, just in time for spring break, the Backstage presents the regional premier of Reefer Madness, a musical adaptation of the 1930’s instructional film (now camp comedy) about marijuana. Willard directs the show, which he notes, “flings the protagonist down the rabbit hole and watches as he spirals faster and faster to the bottom.” The premise: A high school PTA invites a theatre troupe to warn parents of the perils of the new menace; the plot: Young Jimmy must decide between Mary Jane and the girl next door – Mary Lane. One payoff is a solo by “Jesus,” who promotes himself as the “poster boy for Easter,” Willard says. “I can’t wait to produce it.”
Willard’s enthusiasm for the comedy season is abundantly evident, but programming for the theatre has been a trial and error experience. “After two years, I’m getting a sense of what works. Every season is telling me what to do, scratch that out, move that around,” he explains.
Willard has done not only funny material. He was acclaimed in Denver theatre circles for his production of the Serenga Tree, about a white South African’s experience after apartheid, and backed up that success with the production of Hidden at the Backstage during the 2006-07 season. Willard wrote Hidden, about ordinary people living in Amsterdam during the Jewish expulsion of World War II.
Back in the comedy vein, Willard and Jenn have written a musical version of the movie Office Space.
“The other reality, in our business the more commercial titles allow us to do the more edgy ones,” Willard explains. We’ll do edgy shows again, but we’ve decided to do great — but known — shows during the ski season when the majority of the audience is on vacation.”
For more information about this season’s schedule, call 970-453-0199 or visit www.backstagetheatre.org.
Freelance writer Terry Talty is a regular contributor to Colorado Summit Magazine.
