Fearless first-timers mount local play

SANDPOINT — A playwright whose work has never been performed meets up with a director who has never directed to work with a cast of actors who, in the main, have never set foot on stage.

Call it a Confederacy of Innocents, if you will, but this untested coalition burns with a creative spark that is fueled by fearlessness. For two weekends in late August, the writer and theater troupe will take the courageous leap of mounting the new work on the Panida Theater’s big stage.

The script, titled “Death of a Small Town in the West” and billed as a “dark comedy about dark times in apocalyptic Sandpoint,” was penned by Ben Olson. Born and raised in the play’s namesake community, he saw the piece as a chance to stick one thumb in the eye of negative forces that he believes threaten his hometown while reaching out to give a thumbs-up to his version of the good guys with the other.

“This came out of months and months of thought,” said Olson, a freelance journalist and fiction writer who knocked out the dialog and stage direction in one 13-hour enduro as he fed stacks of paper through a hungry typewriter. “If you follow my writing, I’m very concerned about Sandpoint becoming a kitschy, snow globe kind of town. I really wanted to make fun of things that needed to be made fun of and pay homage to some other things.”

“Death of a Small Town in the West” is not mean-spirited or malicious, he noted, but it is a work of fiction inspired by real people.

“And I had a lot of elements in this town to work with,” he said.

In a nutshell, the play turns on the efforts of a main character that Olson describes as a “land-raper” who manages to get elected officials behind his radical development plan — basically, to bulldoze the entire town and re-create it in his image.

The protagonist set against this antagonistic scheme is not a character at all, but the odd assortment of landmark bars that dot the Sandpoint landscape. The names, signs and exteriors might have changed — in some cases, several times — over the years, the playwright pointed out, but these watering holes never lost sight of their true nature on the inside, where it counts.

Olson sees the stubborn survival of these bars as at least one constant in a community that faces increasing pressure to take the money and run into the arms of developers who would turn it into a high-priced, cookie cutter resort.

“They represent Sandpoint’s perseverance,” he said. “There’s a passion and a pride that people have in this town and where it goes that’s almost like a father watching out for his daughter.

“I’m proud of the fact that Sandpoint hasn’t gone where I’m afraid it could go.”

The script was shown to veteran local actor and director Deborah McShane, whose longtime success in local theater made her the obvious choice for helping to bring a first-time playwright’s words to life. When an already packed schedule prevented her from moving forward with the play, she passed the work on to Andrew Sorg, whom she knew in the capacity as a talented fellow actor.

A recently formed group called Sandpoint Onstage was planning its 2010-2011 season when Sorg announced he’d like to try his hand at directing and already had a piece in mind.

“Andrew showed up and said, ‘I have a play and I want to do it,’” said Teresa Pesce who, up to this point, has been the go-to playwright for local scripts.

Sandpoint Onstage, she explained, is an informal group of writers, directors and actors who want the town become known as a hotbed of locally-written and produced stagecraft. With pride, she refers to the younger generation of theater lovers as “my kids.” Those kids, it seems, are now ready to seize the day and storm the stage on their own terms.

“Something that has always seemed like a sad joke to me is that Sandpoint is such an arts community and there was no live theater to speak of,” Sorg said. “We want to get the theater scene going again.”

Using local work streamlines the process of getting plays in front of an audience, while bringing costs such as royalties and script fees within reach of a small group of volunteers, he added.

“And performing local work gives purpose to the writing,” the new director said.

Olson shares that view, which is why he opted to take on the role of producer for his play and roll the dice by circumventing the Panida’s Little Theater venue and moving directly to the main stage. Going large by going to the big auditorium is not a complete crapshoot for the playwright, however. As co-writer of the local, independent film “Bound for Nowhere,” Olson drew a presentable crowd to the 550-seat Panida when that project was screened.

“About 350 people showed up to watch that film,” he said. “It gave me inspiration that something like this can work in this town. I love the idea of presenting the play at the Panida, because it’s the altar of entertainment in this town.

“But in the end, I want other local artists to know that option is there — that we can write and people will come see it,” Olson continued. “I hope this opens that door.”

“Death of a Small Town in the West” will be performed on Aug. 20, 21, 27 and 28 at 7:30 p.m. For ticket information, call (208) 265-2083.