The 12th Annual Clearwater Dinner Theatre had a great opening night.
Even though the play had a new location, a new director and two new cast members, the audience laughed all the way through.
“You worry about it as a director whether you picked the right play,” said Liz Berg, the first-time director.
“And we didn’t have some of our regular cast members - Kent (Asheim), Jack and Eileen (Schulte) and myself,” she said. “But the audience was laughing and enjoying it.”
The play was Francine’s Will, a comedy about a greedy family intent on doing whatever it takes to get their hands on Francine’s fortune.
In past years, Berg was one of the cast. But she decided to take over as director this year.
“At the cast party, usually somebody says they would like to direct next year,” she said. “Last year nobody wanted to do it. I was thinking I’d been with the Clearwater Cast of Characters (CCC) for over nine years and I should take my turn.”
She started reading plays shortly after last season’s production.
“I read 10 to 15 plays and I whittled it down to three I liked,” she said. “I knew Suesan (Betzler) was going to be the assistant director, so I had her read them but I didn’t tell her which one I liked.”
She also asked Donna Stai, a past dinner theatre director, to read the same three plays.
“All three of us liked the same one,” she said.
But selecting the play was just the first step. She also had to cast all the parts and arrange the location. For the first time, the event was moving from the Clearwater Legion to Eagle Trace Event Center.
“It was a new venue. They had never done it before and I had never put it together before,” she said. “There were a lot of meetings. And Donna was a huge help.”
“Being an actor on stage, it looked relatively easy before, but there’s a lot to it. It was a lot harder than I thought - a lot of loose ends to tie up to make everybody happy,” she said.
One of the first problems came when the actor who was supposed to play the lawyer dropped out. Luckily, Berg’s husband, Dave, a member of the CCC, stepped in.
“He was working in North Dakota and had gotten laid off at the time,” she said. “He volunteered and it worked out. He really ran with it.”
Another issue was the stage. The one used at the Legion was 32’ x 18’.
“We had to fit in a space that was 22’ x 24;” said Randy Maanum, a cast member who also worked to put the set together.
When it was finally modified to fit, the entire set couldn’t be completed until a few weeks before opening weekend.
“There was a wedding here. We had the stage up but not decorated because we knew we had to tear it down for the wedding and put it back up,” said Berg.
She said that delay affected the flow of the production and cast members were struggling.
“That kind of threw them off a little bit,” she said. “But once the stage got up, I threw in two extra rehearsals and that really helped. It all came together.”
It all came together, and the audience laughed all together on opening night.
“I have a new appreciation for the job,” said Berg.
The production continues this weekend (April 8-9) and next weekend (April 15-16).
