It takes a village to create Our Town

Times Contributor  

 

It’s taking a village to create Our Town, opening at Rosebud Theatre Sept. 13. Most of the 20-member cast and 30-member crew are from the village of Rosebud, which director Morris Ertman says is much like Grover’s Corners, the fictional town where the play occurs.

In Rosebud and in Grover’s Corners, “everybody knows everybody, and it ain’t perfect,” Ertman said. “There are times where it is ridiculous and there are times where it is sublimely beautiful. And you wouldn’t get those things if you didn’t know everybody.”

David Snider, the resident actor playing Dr. Gibbs, believes “a lot of people who come to Rosebud have a certain enchanted sort of idea,” of what it’s like to live there.

The same might be true for Grover’s Corners. But Our Town “takes you into the kitchens of these families,” where we see “all the chaos that can be in families.” And “at the same time, there is a unique goodness … in the way this community holds together and the way it invites people in. And families are the same.”

Our Town is about both the chaos and the goodness, about “birth, marriage, growing up, death, what it means to be a family, what it means to be a community,” said Ertman. It’s about “moms and dads, and sons and daughters.”

Rosebud’s version of Our Town takes the family theme one step further: bringing two Rosebud father-son pairs into the show.

Ertman’s own son Luke is scoring the Our Town music. The play includes a wedding scene, and Ertman, who performed Luke’s wedding ceremony, says, “so many things (about the play) strike home. And then to hear that music played, to come out of (my son), is an astonishing experience.”

Snider’s son, 12-year-old Donovan, plays Wally Webb. 

“My character is just being a kid, going off to school,” Donovan Snider said. “He’s being your average kid.”

Donovan himself is an above-average kid. 

“I like to be creative in everything I do,” he said, from building with cardboard, foam and Lego, to making and editing movies. Acting isn’t new either, since he’s performed in the Passion Play and Rosebud’s Young Company. But “it feels nice” to work with his dad, “especially in Our Town.”

It’s pretty nice for his dad, too. “What’s great is actually seeing Donovan’s own gifts,” Snider said. “He’s got fun instincts about his role and some scenes he’s doing. … So that’s been fun.”

What’s not so fun for Donovan’s dad is watching Wally Webb die in childhood. “Entertaining that (possibility) is painful,” Snider says, “It hits hard. The idea that not only do I enjoy and want to feel blessed in my time with Donovan as his dad, but the play also asks us to include those possibilities — that maybe that will be taken away.”

“It’s been pretty emotional, actually,” he said, “because this play really asks us to think about how we really relish what we’ve been given.”

Audience members get a chance to relish what we’ve been given Sept. 13 to Oct. 19, on Rosebud’s Opera House stage. For dinner-theatre tickets, call 1-800-267-7553 or see www.rosebudtheatre.com.

“Bring your whole family to this play, whether they’re your blood relatives or kindred in spirit,” Snider said. “It will be entertaining. Some of it is hilarious … but I just think it will stick with you … it’s an unforgettable story.”