Behind the Scenes: the artists behind the scenes at the Bigfork Summer Playhouse

BY DAVID REESE

Bigfork Eagle

Rebecca Sewell has had her time in the limelight.

WHEN SHE WAS a senior at Bigfork High School she performed in “The Lady Pirates of Captain Bree,” and was bitten hard by the performing bug. But now she’s happy to leave that all behind and work behind the scenes at the Bigfork Summer Playhouse.

Sewell is one of several set-shop designers, costumers and technicians who work in a warehouse on a hill above Bigfork. You’d never know the shop is even there, as it’s tucked away on a knoll and hidden by large trees. Inside the shop, though, it’s a completely different world. Upstairs, in an attic, hundreds of props are stashed away in some resemblance of order. Here, Bigfork Summer Playhouse producer Don Thomson has created a world of his own. “He’s a bit of a pack rat,” Newell says of Thomson.

Sewell attends the University of Montana, where she is studying theatre with a focus on stage management. She’s been a part of the Bigfork Summer Playhouse since she was in sixth grade.  

It’s Sewell’s job as a technical assistant to know where to find an obscure prop. There are coffee makers in most every variety. Stuffed animals hang from the wall in a scene straight from a Hitchcock film. On the floor are toilet plungers, giant lollipops, plastic flowers and basketballs. There’s even a head in a basket. “All the usual things,” says Sewell, with a hint of sarcasm mixed with wit, a trait honed, perhaps, by being around highly creative people. “I spend a lot of time up here,” she said. “You either find it here or you don’t. It’s cool up here, but it’s kind of weird when it’s dark.”

Whether it’s for a play like “Grease,” “Oklahoma” or “Guys and Dolls,” you could find just about anything you’d need for a prop. Except yellow umbrellas. For the currently running show of Spamalot, Sewell said they had to actually buy some yellow umbrellas for the Spamalot song “Look on the Bright Side of Life.”

Thomson himself is not ashamed to admit he’s a regular at the auctions up in Kalispell. You might find him prowling around the green box Dumpsters, searching for that perfect prop that just might not be in his warehouse.

Downstairs from the sprawling prop warehouse, carpenters, designers, painters and lighting technicians are busy creating stage props that can’t be found upstairs.

“We rarely make stuff,” Rich Haptonstall, a set designer, said. “We make stuff that looks like other stuff. Sometimes we have to get real, practical things.” Haptonstall worked with Curt Olds, the director for Spamalot, to get the concepts together.

Haptonstall spends his fall, winter and spring seasons as a theatre arts professor at Flathead Valley Community College. There, he’s one-man show who does almost everything on stage and behind the scenes when it comes to theatre productions.  

That’s a switch from his job at FVCC where he often works solo. “Here I have this great collaborative crew,” he said.

Bigfork Summer Playhouse is a true repertory theatre and on any week there can be one of four shows playing nightly. That means all the sets and props for each show have to fit in a limited amount of space offstage. There are only six “drops” that be lowered from the ceiling. All sets must adhere to an 8-foot by 10-foot dimension so that everything can be changed out each night. “Things can’t be too complicated,” Haptonstall said. “You don’t always get to build everything you want to, or build something scenically that you want. But we do a lot with what we have.” Haptonstall is familiar with many aspects of production, from acting, directing, and doing stage design. “I think I can understand the needs of the performers,” he said.

Performers also get in on the shop work. They often work on the sets themselves if they have downtime from rehearsing. That’s part of the attraction of spending 10 weeks at the Bigfork Summer Playhouse. “They like seeing the stuff on stage they built,” Haptonstall said. “It’s a true company. There’s not a lot of distinction between groups.”

As a former actor, Rebecca Sewell also knows what it’s like to be out front in the limelight. Now she’s happy to be offstage or in the audience, seeing her creations come to life — like the handheld rabbit puppets used in Spamalot. For that scene she created two types of rabbits: one that’s a friendly, lovable puppet, and another menacing rabbit that eats a Knight of the Round Table. “Ever since Captain Bree I’ve wanted to be a stage manager,” she said. “This is what I love now.”