Advertisement For nearly three years in the 1990s, Dave Maxwell, Daniel Schneider, Dennis Kuhn and Steve Dotz performed in theaters, churches and festivals around the country and world. There was just something magical about that musical.
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Dave Maxwell, center top, rejoices his way through the gospels of Mark and John in "Cotton Patch Gospel," accompanied by, from left, Dennis Kuhn, Steve Dotz and Daniel Schneider.
File photo |
The magic returns this summer when “Cotton Patch Gospel” is once again presented in the Coulee Region. The performances, which will be in July and August at the Marie W. Heider Center for the Arts in West Salem, are a fundraiser to get the cast and crew to Monaco, where they have been invited to perform in the 14th Festival Mondial du Theatre Amateur Aug. 17-26.
The show reunites the cast with former La Crosse Community Theatre director Morrie Enders and former community theater set designer Dan Heerts, who is now the director of the Heider Center.
Enders said he and the cast realized they had a hit when they first performed the show in 1996, but they had no idea how audiences would connect with the musical that tells the gospels of Mark and John as if they were events happening in modern-day rural Georgia.
It is a long and winding road from 1996 at the La Crosse Community Theatre to the festival in Monaco.
In 1997, the show won first place at the Wisconsin State Theatre Festival, along with awards for the four cast members. It went on to win first place at the Region III Festival, third place at American Association of Community Theatre Fest and an acting award for Maxwell.
In 1998, they did a showcase performance at AACT Region 10 Festival of One Acts in Heidelberg, Germany, and performed at theaters in Florida. They also took the show on the road to the Temple Theatre in Viroqua and to many churches in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
And now it has come home again.
Enders, who is now artistic director at the Kalamazoo Civic Theatre in Michigan, was originally approached about the Civic’s “Avenue Q” production for the festival. But when he couldn’t get the licensing house in New York to agree to let them perform it at Monaco, Enders suggested “Cotton Patch Gospel.” Ross Rowland, a past AACT president, had seen “Cotton Patch” and was quick to say yes.
“I said, ‘Let me make five phone calls, and I’ll call you back,’” Enders said. “I proceeded to call the cast and Dan Heerts, who was one of my scene designers in La Crosse. I called them all up and asked them, ‘How would you like to go on summer vacation with me this year — to Monaco?’ What I got was a lot of giggling,” he said, but when he convinced them he was serious, they all said yes.
“I figured the best way to raise money to go would be to perform it again,” Enders said, and the best place to perform it would be in the Coulee Region, where the show and the cast are well known and well loved.
Though they only need an hour version for the Monaco festival, Enders’ cast will be performing the full show in West Salem.
He said the Heider Center was a great choice because it seats 650 people and it brings him back together with his old set designer, Dan Heerts. “He was the perfect choice to travel with us as our tech person, so it made sense to do the show in his theater.”
Enders said “Cotton Patch” has allowed this group of people to go out to the world and bring a bit of that world back to the Coulee Region.
“It absolutely changes you. When you travel to these places and you’re not just looking at pretty buildings and you’re interacting with locals, you truly understand that the world is a much larger place than you thought it was. Once you make these person-to-person connections, it does unite the world.”
The production presented at the Heider Center will stand on its own merits, Enders said. “It will have some different resonance. As an artist, you bring all of your life with you as you work on the play. So it’s who we are now as people. It will make it interesting. It’s not as if you’re just getting out the candy mold and making another piece of candy. It’s hand-crafted.”
