The last weekend of October: normally a weekend in which many people dress up, go out and have some fun in the mid-autumn air. Whether going to a party or taking children around the neighborhood to collect sweets, it is a fun time to put on a costume, apply some make-up, and pretend to be somebody (or something) else for a day. For five years of my life, this was certainly true, but not in going around to parties or driving children around. Instead, my make-up application and dressing up was for the stage.

During my late middle school and throughout my high school life, I had the opportunity to act in one of the most established of high school theatre companies in central Wisconsin. The Edgar Theatre Company, or ETC as known to just about everyone, has been an opportunity that I took and will never forget. From 2007 to 2012, I spent many of my summer and autumn evenings in a gym, memorizing lines, singing songs, blocking entrances and exits, and overall having many conversations with fellow actors backstage while waiting for a scene to progress. Whether it was a spot in the ensemble or a lead role, I was more than happy to develop and showcase my talents to the community, and enjoyed every minute that I contributed to bringing life to a playwright’s work. By the time I finished, I had been a young businessman; southern officer; nervous schoolteacher; Peanuts character; armored ghost; speakeasy patron; concerned father; trucker; civil war reenactor; dishwasher; mill worker; scarecrow; mugger; vaudeville dancer; Schoolhouse Rocker; and a slightly insane but very kind gentleman, at the pinnacle of my career.

I also worked beyond the stage as well, painting and building sets with multiple flats and doors, not to mention the many props and set pieces, donated, borrowed, or bought! Each piece and its location only added to the story that we told, no matter how realistic or crude it was. Together we able to train our minds to remember pages upon pages of lines, and go off-book within two and a half weeks from the show date, helping each other out at times with ad. lib. and other types of banter to keep each other on track.

At the center of all this was the mother of each show, the matriarch and leader of our extensive and ever-growing family: Rachel K. Olson. As director, she was the visionary for each performance, planning long before the first rehearsal and calling for perfection with every day we drew near each performance weekend. Fulfilling the dream of an amazing administrator, together they brought the creativity and life that theatre can bring to a small town community. However, at one point the school was facing funding issues, and it seemed it was going to be hard for the activity to receive funding. With that, and as the story goes, Ms. Olson decided to forsake any funding from the school, and worked to make ETC self-sustaining. Year after year, while dealing with the craziness of high school students that were only amateurs of the stage (and of varying ability in memorizing lines), she also worked with parents and many local businesses to advertise and raise funds to keep theatre afloat and alive. At times, it was probably likely that she used her own funds to help keep us on stage.

It was only fitting, then, that the final performance before her retirement was a way to sum up everything that she has “dealt with” over the years, in a performance of Curtain Going Up, a play by Gregory Johnston. The basic plot of this play was of a highly relationship-oriented group of high school students that all auditioned for a civil war play at their school. The director of the performance was a new teacher at the high school, and had to fill the big shoes left behind by the previous director. This was something she was constantly reminded of, on top of having to deal with a cranky janitor, student egos, and even a love triangle that formed between the costumer and that of the journalism teacher. This was balanced out by the students, who had various heated conversations and their own love triangles to deal with. Throughout the play, anything that could go wrong in the development of such a performance certainly did go wrong. However, as it seems to happen with all productions of this sort and no matter how bad it gets, the play is a success, and many lessons are learned as a result.

In watching the performance, I was greatly impressed by the students and the effort they put into play their parts on stage. Even for a play in which there are supposed to be miscues, such a performance is hard to pull off, especially at the high school level. However, the students put on a phenomenal play, nothing short, I am sure, of the quality that Ms. Olson would want.

Overall, I could not have imagined life now without those years of fun I had working with many students under such a passionate and hard-working director. With the added help of Larry Kirchgaessner, Steve “Superman” Wold, and Kathie “Momma K” Kessler, I no doubt have a profound love for the stage, and am always itching for an opportunity to return one day. With that, the many friends I made from the when I was the rookie to most senior member of the group is more than I could ever ask for in life. Thus, when I heard that with the retirement of Ms. Olson there will, in fact, be a successor to the director role, I was overjoyed to know that all the hard work to build up this beautiful program was not to leave due to the loss of its most central member. I wish Ms. Emily Timm as she takes over the role, and hope she does not have the troubles of the characters in Curtain Going Up!

So to all my friends who are always a part of the ETC family, as well as anyone else who continues to support our endeavors: long live ETC!