Homesteading love story tugs at the heartstrings

As rehearsal wrapped up late Monday night, Hugh Butterfield and Mariah McGarvey joked loudly enough to fill the Bigfork Center for the Performing Arts’ auditorium with the sound of their exhausted laughter.

They just finished acting out the last scene of Tim Sell’s “Prairie Heart,” Butterfield plays the lost-in-love Olaf Olson, and McGarvey plays the chaste and chased Ingrid Thorgrimsdottir. The characters they play are Norweigian immigrants that live in a small town in central North Dakota.

It’s a love story set in the homesteading days of insecurity and open land. Karen Kolar is directing the play as part of the Bigfork Community Players’ last show of the season. Kolar is in her 26th year with the community players and has directed at least one play a year since 1992.

Kolar came across the play online. She said she loved it as soon as she saw it for several reasons—it’s a family play (g-rated), it’s a love story, and her parents homesteaded. The love story is what really grab’s at Kolars heartstrings, especially the last scene.

“Everytime I see that scene, I cry, because it’s so heartfelt,” Kolar said.

Even after six weeks of rehearsal, she repeated that phrase Monday as Butterfield and McGarvey finished their lines.

The play begins with Ingrid’s journey to North Dakota. Ingrid already has a job lined up as a nanny, but the parents of the kids die before Ingrid arrives and she has nowhere to go. Olaf takes her in off the street.

“She’s not even sure if she should talk to him at first,” McGarvey said of Ingrid.

He sleeps in the barn, she sleeps inside the house and they both work on his farm.

“He lives by himself until Ingrid comes along,” Butterfield said of Olaf. “He’s kind of socially awkward, and by the end of the play he’s not.”

Work was Olaf’s life before Ingrid comes along and gives him a companion, but all their interactions take place at arms length. The play progresses into a love triangle, after Ingrid meets a suitor in town.

Kolar came across Butterfield and McGarvey at Flathead Valley Community College, where Kolar teaches jewelry design. She saw Butterfield act in FVCC’s rendition of “Annie,” and he recommended McGarvey for the part of Ingrid.

Butterfield and McGarvey have know each other since performing in “Annie” together.

“Seeing Hugh as Ole is perfect. He is Ole,” McGarvey said. “Except Hugh doesn’t talk to goats.”

“The joke is that he talks to goats because they’re the only ‘people’ he feels comfortable enough to talk to,” Butterfield said.

Butterfield agrees with McGarvey’s assessment of his likeness to Olaf, especially the honesty of the character and Olaf’s need to make jokes out of situations he’s uncomfortable with.

For both McGarvey and Butterfield, the play struck home, much like it did with Kolar. McGarvey’s family is from North Dakota. Her great-grandfather homesteaded and her grandfather’s name was Ole.

“I feel like she (Ingrid) was meant for, written for me,” McGarvey said. “It just feels right.”

Showtimes are at the Bigfork Center for the Performing Arts, April 20-22, and 27-29, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 2 p.m. on Sundays. Tickets can be purchased at Kalispell Grand Hotel, Bigfork Drug, Bigfork Museum of Art and History or at the door.

The cost is $6 for children under 12 years old, $11 for Bigfork Community Players members, those aged 12-18, for those over the age of 65, and $16 for general admission.