I didn’t know it was going to be
my last year teaching. It was just another school year and I was excited to get
started. One thing I loved about teaching was that each year was a fresh start.
The sins of the past were removed and one started fresh. I n ever really knew
what sins needed repentance, but there had to be some. Teachers don’t like all
students and students definitely don’t like all teachers. But I would get a new
crop of freshman and I always looked forward to that.
I was excited about a new script
and a new team. I had decided on the exact number I needed to cast, who the
characters would be and I would write a few pages before auditions. I was going
to take three women seven men. I knew Terry Dyck and Dave Thompson
were coming back to school and I hoped they would both return to Portrait player,
but expected the rest to all be new. I received a great big wonderful surprise.
Garry Tollefson returned to attend CTC and wanted back in. Absolutely. I was
thrilled to have him. Three possible returning guys on a brand new project! How
exciting. If they all wanted to be part of the team again they were all in. Con Hild was also still at CBC but he was working on the college staff. I was sure he would be a big support.
When I held auditions I explained
the plan and told them a new script is a lot of hard work. They would be
required to memorize some pages that might b-completely thrown out the next
rehearsal, but they would also be in on the group floor of helping to create
and shape something new. I had the largest turnout for auditions ever with way
more men and women. God was definitely in it as I did not have to reject too
many. I hated that part of the process. It always made me nervous that I would
make a mistake and regret on choice I rejected.
My research continued and expanded.
I was still serving on the LIFE committee so there were trips to Nyack for
meetings and the opportunity to hang out with historian John Sawin to get his
input. He had been a valuable asset on two other pieces and got me started on
this one. I valued his knowledge and desire to make this work. He had a couple
of opportunities to see Tombstones
and I promised he would see this one as well. Since Bob Bell lived on Long
Island I told him I would try to bring it to his school and on the way stop at
the John’s church in Nyack. He told me he would make sure that happened.
The first order of business that
fall was to convince our president, Dave Rambo, that this would be a very good
thing for the school and therefore it would be worth the money necessary to
find the development. He was 100% on board.
I had several requests for
information and research in the mail when school began. I had the first of
several calls completed to Bob Bell and his sister Mary. Mrs. Bell was alive
and living near her daughter in Lincoln, but regretfully she had Alzheimer’s
and had not memory of the ship being sunk, the raft or even having been a
missionary. Bob and Mary ultimately began to feed me some important clues. I
wanted to know some of things that talked about while on the raft. Initially
all they said was “Just the
ordinary things of daily life.” But when asking them about what they ate and
drank it got better. The raft has a storage compartment with survival items
such as: fishing line, containers for collecting rain water, canned rations
like the military had. The problem was that there was clearly not enough for
nineteen people and nineteen days. They fished and dream of real meals. One of
the sailors was the cook. I let him start the food conversations.
I tried to find some of the
sailors for their input but never connected with any of them. I was left with
history, the book and thoughts of the Bell children. All the conversation was
going to come from my head. I had no idea what they talked about.
The play came together slowly. The
raft was going to be a staging problem. I had to have one that would fit in the
trailer we pulled. I wanted it to rock. I sat down with John Dueck the head of
maintenance and his crew to talk about the problems. We drew up several ideas
before the photo of the raft arrived. Then John knew what do to right away. For
economy we made it 8x8 and built it mostly out of 2x4’s eight feet long. It was
built in two sections so it would split in half for transport and give it more
ability to rock. That problem was solved by strapping tractor tire inner tubes
to the bottom of each section so that the natural movement of the actors would
make it shake. It worked great.
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