Speed of Sound

Community and educational theaters looking for an inexpensive play that will captivate their audience and stretch their actors skills have a hard time finding plays that can be produced for the entire family. Most of the good ones have been done over and over and it doesn't seem that many new ones have quite the fun-factor family audiences desire.

In 1975, an energetic young actress named Jane VanBoskirk discovered an 80 year-old play by Joaquin Miller. Miller, a poet of the late 19th Century, was designated "The Shakespeare of the Sierras" and wrote much about the gold rush. VanBoskirk scrounged a core of local actors and technicians and on a shoe-string budget produced and directed the smash hit of the Pacific Northwest. Touring the play to over 29 locations over a seven month period in 1976, the play was written up locally as "Beats the Freedom Train", and as the best good time in local theater in decades. Newspaper articles appeared as far away as the London Times where the English have long held Miller in high esteem. The play eventually secured grants from the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission of Oregon, and the Oregon Arts Commission.

Twenty years later, one of the original actors in VanBoskirk's production produced the play as an educational experience for local teens in Vidalia, GA. A minor grassroots arts grant helped fund the production. In addition to being a first acting experience for most of the young actors, it was the first look at American literature from that theatrical period. The most amazing experience was watching the young actors build, paint, create the scene settings, and discover that they could act on a stage with people watching.

The success of the productions is based on a solid script with a melodramatic ending, the inclusion of period music played well by local musicians on guitar, piano, and violin, and foot-stomping dance numbers. Period songs used as olios help set the mood. One line guaranteed to light up the audience is given when the villain is giving advice on winning the hand of the heroine to the young hero. He says, "Woo her, win her, wed her. Wear plenty of perfumery for few women can reason, but all women can smell."

Reviews of the VanBoskirk production were titled "Thar's Gold in this Show" and "Melodramas' Opening Night Beats the Freedom Train". Excerpts include "An assortment of colorful characters complicate the plot. A kindly, broken-down prospector, a total wreck of a drunk, and raucous barmaids had the audience stomping and hissing on opening night." "The cast dishes up a hearty helping of ham-n-corn, but the play is well adapted to this sort of excess. The actors have as much fun as the audience."

To sum it up, if you are needing a great play with loads of potential fun and appreciative audiences, "49" may be that nugget you've been digging for.

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