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Bulletin












MARCH 2003

Buntport Theater's Mad Geniuses

By Leslie Weddell

Photos by Buntpot Theater. What do you call a theater company that turns a brutal tragedy by Shakespeare into a musical parody, puts headphones on its audience and transforms “The Odyssey” into an onstage walking tour, and produces “Donner: A Documentary,” which documents not the ill-fated emigrant party but a reindeer disgruntled with corporate life at North Pole, Inc.?

You call it Buntport Theater.

Glance at a playbill listing the Buntport Theater Company’s recent productions and it’s easy to see why the troupe, the creation of six Colorado College graduates, has quickly earned a reputation for being quirky, innovative, and brilliant.

The company is comprised of Erik Edborg ’97; Erin Rollman ’98; Hannah Duggan ’98; Brian Colonna ’00; Matthew Petraglia ’99; and Samantha Schmitz ’00. All six are from Colorado and all were theater majors except Petraglia, who majored in biochemistry. Edborg, Rollman, Duggan, and Colonna appear onstage; Petraglia and Schmitz provide the backstage wizardry.

According to The Denver Post theater critic, who calls them “mad geniuses,” the group is the “most creative, intelligent, irreverent, inventive, refreshing, spontaneous, and clever theater company in town.” Productions are a collaborative effort, with the group writing all their own material. “We have a tendency to creep toward comedy, primarily because we like to laugh,” Rollman says. “All our stuff is a little on the odd side.”

The group’s name came about accidentally in 1998, when Edborg misunderstood the word ‘Kennebunkport,’ the coastal town in Maine where the Bush clan spends its summers. The mangled word stayed with him.

It’s the company in a nutshell: Twist what’s traditional and you have Buntport Theater.

The troupe members met in theater classes and performances at Colorado College. In the fall of 1998, they created and produced “Quixote,” in which the protagonist was a professor obsessed with the novel “Don Quixote.” The only props were chalk, chalkboards, and erasers, the time-honored tools of academia. The show was well-received and performed throughout Colorado, as well as in Philadelphia, Chicago, and at various festivals in Canada.

They continued to work together, and in June 2001 opened their own black box theater a few blocks south of Denver’s downtown. Since then, the sextet has garnered praise and accolades from a variety of theater critics.

Photo:  Sandra H. Elkind The troupe’s creativity is palpable. Consider “Donner: A Documentary,” an inspired comedy in which the herd mentality of reindeer is strikingly similar to American corporate life. The play, which ran during the 2001 Christmas season, depicts a year in the life of Donner as he becomes increasingly dissatisfied with the corporate world. Donner (originally called Donder, but Santa made him change his name because it sounded too ethnic) is resentful of Rudolph and his legendary nose. “He had a discolored nose. I have a lazy eye,” Donner says, aggrieved that Rudolph’s abnormality should lead to fame while he toils in near anonymity.

Donner’s reindeer coworkers are a cross-section of Generation X. Comet is a trust-fund reindeer, Vixen works as an exotic dancer between seasons, and Dasher and Dancer are rock musicians. All, with the exception of Donner, buy into the team environment fostered by the North Pole. Frustrated by the lack of recognition, Donner quits, determined to find a new job.

Another ingenious production, which ran in 2002 and early this year, is “Titus Andronicus! The Musical,” in which the company transforms the Bard’s tragic tale of revenge and deceit into a side-splitting comedy. The show won The Denver Post’s Best Comedy of 2002, and actor Colonna was nominated for Best Actor in a Comedy for his performance. The musical includes revenge, murder, rape, insanity, dismemberment, and cannibalism, elements not usually found in musical productions. The action revolves around a painted van with trap doors cut into it. When a sword is needed, the dipstick is brandished. When Titus sacrifices his hand, it’s smashed off in the van door. When a puppeteer portrays two brothers, he uses a ripped-out car radio and gas can.

The troupe also garnered rave reviews for their walking-tour adaptation of Homer’s “The Odyssey.” Audience members don headsets with prerecorded scripts and walk about the stage, accompanying Odysseus on his epic journey home. Curtains divide the stage into smaller spaces in which cast members reenact various parts of the journey.

In Buntport’s version, bad-boy Poseidon makes his entry in a sports car, the Lotus Eaters are portrayed by a hypnotist, and audience members are tied to a mast and squirted with sea foam.

The company’s next full-length production will open in May, however the group hasn’t decided yet what it will be. “We work best under pressure,” Rollman jokes.

In between full-length shows, the company offers an ongoing sit-com every other week. The series, called “Magnets on the Fridge,” follows the escapades of an eccentric book club.

The audience offers book suggestions, and Buntport members discuss the options and incorporate one of the books into the next performance. The group has a week and a half to write the next show, which runs for three nights, before they’re working on the next episode. “It’s like a TV sit-com,” Duggan says. “The characters stay the same from week to week, but the plot changes. It’s a lot of fun because we’re not doing the same thing each week.” Now in its second season, the series has well-established characters and a loyal audience.

Many of the books incorporated into the sit-com shows are classics. “We like the classics because we don’t have to explain the jokes to the audience,” Rollman says. However, they’ve also used books such as “The Nirvana Blues” by John Nichols, “The Sneetches” by Dr. Seuss and Emily Post’s “Etiquette.”

In addition to being immensely creative, the group also strives to make theater accessible to a wide range of people. “There is a sense, on some level, of the theater being inaccessible,” Rollman says. “To some extent I agree that there is an in-feeling about going to the theater; a sense of the elite.”

To help dispel those perceptions, tickets are never more than $12 for the full-length Buntport productions, and $5 or less for the ongoing sit-com series. “We want to get people into the theater, to try it out,” Rollman says. “We want people to know that theater can be ridiculous and fun. They should have a good time without it costing a lot of money.”

For a list of upcoming shows, visit www.buntport.com

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