Scene: The Blackfoot River. A bright summer day. A flotilla of rafts and inner tubes bobs by the bank, amid a crowd of three dozen people in bathing suits. Stacy Ohrt-Billingslea, a suntanned 30-something actress, cups her hands over her mouth.
Stacy: (her voice booming down the river) “OK, everyone, we don’t want any disasters, so be safe out here, watch out for rocks, and don’t spill your beer.”
***
Cut to scene: A thin, dark-haired woman in a bikini, Jess Adam by name, thrashing in the river atop an inner tube, bouncing between boulders in an underwhelming stretch of whitewater.
Jess: “Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod, grab me, grab me, I’m going to die!”
A newspaper reporter standing beside the river wades in and grabs Jess by the hand, pulling her into the calm shallows.
Jess: “Oh. My. God. That was horrifying! I’m still shaking, do you see me shaking? (Jess raises her hand. It’s shaking.) Oh, I don’t like this. Didn’t you hear me screaming?”
Reporter: “No.”
Jess: “How could you not hear me?”
Nearby, another actress, Salina Chatlain, stands on a rock, wagging her head and laughing.
Salina: (to newspaper reporter) “Welcome to the Colony. There’s always a little extra drama. (to Jess) You’re all right. You’re alive. You’re fine.”
Jess: “Well, I almost died. Sort of.”
Salina: “You didn’t even fall off your inner tube.”
Jess: (pouting) “Well, but … I could have.”
***
Cut to scene: Jim McLure, a California playwright with short-cropped gray hair, stands waist-deep in a calm river eddy, clad in nothing but a pair of shorts, black shoes and white socks. Cupping his hands, he slowly lifts a splash of water to his face, rubs his face with it, and silently repeats several times over the course of minutes.
Behind him, the rest of the group of floaters has beached and is frolicking, drinking beer, loudly quoting lines from famous plays. Emerging from the cacophonous crowd, Greg Johnson, artistic director of Montana Repertory Theatre, approaches the newspaper reporter.
Greg: (gesturing toward Jim) “Look at that. That’s a real Colony moment for you. This trip is such an essential part of the Colony. For 15 years now, we’ve had all these actors and directors and writers coming from all over the country, and they come for the camaraderie and to push the envelope and be pushed in their work. But you know, the creative process by necessity involves moments of intensity separated by moments of celebration and relaxation. So every year now, we build it into the schedule that in the middle of the Colony, we take a day off from working and go float the river. It may seem frivolous, but in a way I think it’s one of the most important parts of what we can offer here.”
The reporter wades quietly out to where Jim McLure stands in the water.
Jim: “When we were coming down the river, the conversation on our raft, everything seemed to turn Chekhovian – ‘Oh, when I was a young child, I used to float on rivers, my brother and I; we would read books.’ … ‘Oh, I remember when sex was good and the food was bountiful.’ … You know, when I tell people that I come to Missoula every summer for this thing called the Colony, they always ask what for, and I tell them that Missoula is like what people dreamed about back in the ’60s, this tight little community where everybody is well-educated and literate and everybody has their job that they do and then they have their creative persona. You sit in the bar and you meet someone who’s a construction worker, but he’s also a writer or a musician. You turn around and you meet a woman, you start talking, and you find out she’s a published poet. It’s a magical place, really.”
***
Cut to scene: A short while later, on one of the rafts.
Salina: “The process is definitely pretty intense. We generally try to get the scripts from everyone by the opening party of the Colony on Friday, but then the readings start the next day, so you really don’t have a lot of time to prepare for them. I acted in Jim McLure’s play on Sunday. Oh, man, it was awesome, epic; it was like 160 pages, so we had to hang a sign telling the audience that they might be there for awhile. Since these plays have never been done before, you literally don’t know how long some of them will take until it’s happening.
(As Salina speaks, another raft floats closer. On it, Jess Adam is again recounting her near-death experience in the rapids.)
Jess: “It was just, like, rock after rock – they just kept coming.”
Salina: (to Jess, over her shoulder) “Well, it was also just, like, your anticipatory screaming that stretched the whole thing out.”
***
Cut to scene: As the flotilla of actors stammer-sing through the chorus of “Proud Mary,” actor and playwright Greg Keller, a dark-haired 20-something from Brooklyn, lounges quietly in the back of the reporter’s raft, his face turned skyward, a gin and tonic in his hand.
Reporter: “How did your reading go?”
Greg: “It went really well, I guess. I mean, it’s my first time here, but it’s just such a supportive environment, so that made it easier. I feel like I’m just finding my voice as a playwright, so it’s great to be able to come to a place where I’m away from New York, I don’t have to worry about what the critics will say or whatever. It feels like a safe place in that respect, which is something I find really valuable.”
(Long pause.)
Greg: “But you know, now, out here on the river, I’m thinking: theater, schmeater. This is why you come to Montana.”
The Colony, a gathering of professional playwrights, actors and directors at the University of Montana, continues through Saturday with daily readings of new plays at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. All readings are open to the public and take place at the Montana Theatre in UM’s PAR/TV Building. Tickets to readings are $5 for afternoon readings, $10 for evening readings. In addition, comedienne Kate Roxburgh will perform two special shows as part of the Colony, at 11 p.m. tonight and tomorrow, at the Crystal Theatre, located at 515 S. Higgins Ave. For a detailed schedule of events, visit www.montanarep.org.
[...] Over the years, McLure was involved in several noteworthy productions in Missoula. I won’t ever forget his show-stealing turn in Ron Fitzgerald’s “Boomtown” last year — which ran at the Crystal Theatre in a two-week rotation with McLure’s own, brilliantly witty play, “Used Cars.” I only meet McLure once, while reporting a fun story about last summer’s river-float by participants in the Colony. I can still picture him standing waist-deep in the water, talking to me about this “magical place” he so loved. [...]