Jim Caron – Clownmommy

Leaving Bigfork

8/17/09

I stopped by the theatre to pick up my reunion t-shirt. Then I walked along Electric Avenue and looked at the shops, some that were there when I was a playhouse actor and most that were not. In the gift shop next to the theatre I heard some people talking about JK Simmons and how he had been walking around town like anybody.
“Yeah, he’s one of us,” said one of the men.
Then they started to talk about his older brother David, “that big guy with the big voice”. He was a friend of mine when we were both still in Missoula going to school and involved with the Missoula Children’s Theatre and for the record he is the younger brother. During one pre-production build, I rode out to Lolo in a truck with David to pick up some lumber or piece of equipment for a show and as we drove past the McDonalds I read the sign announcing “Chicken McNuggets”. It was the first time in my life I’d seen those words and I laughed all the way to Lolo. Chicken McNuggets. Who thought that would last.

Who knew that 50 years after some college kids showed up to put on plays in the sleepy town of Bigfork, Montana, that the theatre would be the centerpiece of the town’s vibrant summer tourist industry. There was much praise for Don and Jude Thompson who have run the playhouse for most of it’s history, but also much praise and admiration for Bo Brown who started the theater company in 1960. He gave a lovely speech at the gala. I can imagine how inspirational and charismatic he must have been as a young man. When he was done after 8 years, he turned the theatre over to DT who with his wife Jude grew it too what it is today. For several years in the 1970’s when Jim Caron was in the company, actors who didn’t have anything better to do spend the winter with Jim and the Missoula Children’s Theatre Association. I was one of the kids they worked with back then. I talked my parents into taking me up to Bigfork to see the professional theater. We would camp and fish and in the evening my dad would row my mother and I and sometimes my sister to the dock at Bigfork and we would get out of the boat and go up the hill and attend the theater in the old building. (We bought the orange drink Bo Brown mentioned in his speech.) I would buy the program and ask everyone in the company for their autograph. Even 5-year-old Gavin Thompson who played the youngest Snow child in Carousel printed his first name over his picture in my program. He’s married now with children and a career in technical theatre.

The number of Bigfork Alumni still in the business is a testament to the quality of performers and technicians Don and Jude hired. Others have equally impressive jobs in academics and health care. At the party one actor was talking to a musician about a successful Broadway musical he had been in which had a group dynamic and creative smart caring people at the helm that had reminded him of the Bigfork Summer Playhouse.

I’m glad I came back to Bigfork

Sunday 8/16/09

We got lost on the way to the softball game because it wasn’t where I thought it would be. It wasn’t where we played against the town when I was a company member.

The game was fun to watch. There was beer and clowning and the old guys who were in the playhouse company years ago (including JK Simmons) were serious about winning. And they did; 25-5. Of course the stakes were a lot higher for the guys who paid a lot of money and planed for a long time to travel to Montana to revisit their youth. The townies just rolled out of bed and decided to show up at the softball field.

I spent the afternoon talking to an old friend I first met when we were both in the very first Missoula Community Theatre production, Oliver. It was a big deal. (The afore mentioned Mr. Simmons was the musical director.) I remember Jim Caron telling us if it didn’t work the Missoula Children’s Theatre might cease to exist. Just renting the score probably cost more than the Missoula Children’s Theatre Association had ever spent to produce a show. I was in 8th grade at the time. The friend I spent the afternoon with was in high school and a cheerleader. We did not travel in the same social circles back then.

This weekend at Bigfork we had much common as mom’s out and about without our families, so we became each others date for the Gala. We had lunch together and talked about our years at Sentinel High School and the University of Montana.

We each did only one season at Bigfork. As we talked about it we realized that was because we were not the right age or at the right time in our lives to come back season after season like some of the others did. She was too young when she came, right out of high school, and I felt too old, just a couple of years out of college and eager to move away from Montana to Seattle.

I found myself singing and humming this weekend and I do regret not having taken the opportunity to put the music from at least 4 more shows into my body. I miss singing. And by singing I mean show tunes.

Bigfork Summer Playhouse Alumni Questionaire

name

address Brooklyn, NEW YORK

yada yada yada

Married/partnered/children/pets YES

Years you participated in the Bigfork Summer Playhouse: 1990

Names of productions and roles performed (if you remember). Shy in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Anytime Annie in 42nd Street, the youngest daughter, in the red and white dress while everyone else wore pastels, getting carried all over the place by everyone in The Pirates of Penzance

Were you part of the crew? no

Are you still involved in the performing arts? yes

What is your current career? stage clown, Clowns Ex Machina

What hobbies do you pursue now? What are you passionate about? drinking coffee and raising my daughter

How did your experience with BSP affect your career choices? helped define me as a comedienne

What is the biggest lesson you learned from your tenure with BSP? don’t date outside the company

What was the funniest/hardest/most dramatic moment from your tenure with BSP? The man-boy actors were in the middle a pie fight using the leftovers from the gala just as the local volunteer ladies showed up to visit the dorm and collect the empty potluck dishes.

What was the biggest challenge faced doing Repertory Theatre with BSP. getting enough sleep Do you think this is still a challenge? yes

Any tales of romance or intrigue you’d care to share with us? that’s like asking if there are any undiscovered lakes you can see from the highway

What advice would you give an aspiring actor just getting involved with BSP. It’s not abut being talented it’s about putting in the hours. What do you wish someone had told you before your accepted your spot with cast/crew? start young, stay long, appreciate Montana

What makes BSP unique compared to other summer stock or repertory theater groups? It’s in Bigfork, MONTANA!!!!!!!! In the SUMMER!

Why do you think theater and performing arts are important to our society? THIS is the question that caused me to set aside this form without filling it out…just saying. What benefits are there to participating in live theatre as a crew or cast member? Is this an essay question? How about as an audience member? As a kid growing up in Missoula in the 1970’s it was the closest I could get to professional theatre watching Kim and David Simmons, Laurie Bialik, Emily Clubb, Dick Nagle, Jim Caron, Kathy Danzer and the rest…

What’s your one dearest wish for the future of the Bigfork Summer Playhouse? That it will continue long enough for me to be a “blue-hair” watching my niece on stage while my daughter runs the light board.

Humor Abuse

We went to see Lorenzo Pisoni’s solo show, “Humor Abuse” at the Manhattan Theatre Club last night. It was a touching performance by a man who in the 1970’s was a child clown in the San Francisco based Pickle Family Circus and who as an adult is a serious New York actor.

I never saw the Pickle Family Circus, but we watched videos with reverence at Clown College because that was where Bill Irwin (the clown who became a MacArthur Fellow had gone to develop his own style with Larry Pisoni and Geoff Hoyle after graduating from the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Clown College (and Oberlin). But, I remember the black and white photograph of Larry Pisoni with his son in identical clown costumes. As a novice clown struggling to master basic juggling in a few short weeks, growing up with circus parents seemed like a much easier way to go.

Apparently not.

According to the show “Humor Abuse” learning to be a clown from a father who is a professional clown didn’t sound that much different from growing up with a football coach for a father. Same type of obsession just practicing different skills. I’m thinking sports analogies because yesterday afternoon before seeing Lorenzo Pisoni’s show and this morning after the performance, I escorted My Kid to her first and second AYSO soccer games of the season. As an eight-year-old she is unable to participate in league soccer unless her parents are also willing to participate on a game by game basis.

I think about the similarities between playing fields and circus rings. I didn’t play team sports as a child and didn’t find that kind of focus until I began to perform with the Missoula Children’s Theatre under the direction of Jim Caron, at about the same time that Lorenzo. Pisoni was working with his father. The two organizations had the same do-it-yourself aesthetic of the 1970’s that grew out of the cooperative ideals of the 1960’s and shaped the lives of those who came of age in the 1980’s.