Nickell’s Bag

Last weekend, more than 2,300 people turned out to cheer and sing along at Montana Actors’ Theatre’s production of “The Rocky Horror Show” at the Wilma Theatre. With four performances spread over just 32 hours, it was a watershed weekend for local professional theatre — a moment when good timing and material (“Rocky Horror” at a spooky old theatre on Halloween weekend) combined with a great production to set new standards for what’s possible in locally produced, professional theatre.

So Grant Olson can be excused if his head is still in the clouds.

“I didn’t sleep Friday after the shows,” said Olson, MAT’s artistic director. “When we finished, everybody in the cast was like, did we really just do this? Is it really over? When do we get to do that again? It felt almost surreal.”

For longtime Missoula theatergoers, it might have felt more like a flashback.

In 1981, a small community theatre troupe called Missoula Children’s Theatre decided to mount Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar” for one weekend at the Wilma Theatre. It was a huge creative and financial risk for the company, which was still a volunteer-run organization.

But the shows packed the place, leading the company to hold over the production for an extra day. Last year, Jim Caron, now the CEO of the internationally known company, recalled the impact of that production in an interview with the Missoulian.

“That is what really made the MCT Community Theatre,” said Caron. “It put us at a different level; from that day on, things sold out. Taking that risk was a real turning point for us as a company.”

To put last weekend’s numbers in perspective, Montana Actors’ Theatre produced eight different plays in its debut 2008-2009 season at the Crystal Theatre. Most of those productions ran for nine nights each. Add up all of the tickets sold to those performances, and you get “pretty much the same number of people” as showed up at the Wilma Theatre last weekend alone, according to Olson.

The big crowds meant that Olson’s company made money on the show, even after paying the large cast, crew, and musicians.

The success will have immediate impacts on MAT. For one thing, Olson said it means he can produce shows without worrying as much in the short-term about how to pay the bills.

“It means I can pay my staff and actors and technicians until we do a fundraiser in February,” said Olson. “Even at the biggest theaters there’s a lot of volunteer work going on, but we’re a part of Missoula’s economy now, and we’re going to be able to put more resources into the shows we’ve got coming up.”

Those shows include, most immediately, a production of Tom Stoppard’s whip-smart comedy, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” which opens at the Crystal Theatre in early December.

Olson said he is also considering touring “The Rocky Horror Show” around the region, perhaps as soon as this February. With a reasonably portable set and a remarkable cast of actors, “It’s already a show that wouldn’t take much adjustment to put it on the road.”

Whether “Rocky Horror” will have the impact on MAT that “Superstar” did on MCT, remains to be seen. But last weekend’s success proved what many have long suspected: that professional theatre, done right, can succeed in Missoula.

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