Depending on what type of fan you’re talking to, Missoula is a football town, a writer’s town, a music city, an outdoors hub. It goes on and on. For drama enthusiasts, though, it’s been a hyperactive city when it comes to theater since 2021-22. While many larger cities saw troupes and venues shutter their doors because of the pandemic, Missoula re-emerged with almost all of its major companies intact. Longtime anchors like Missoula Children’s Theatre and the University of Montana School of Theatre and Dance are putting on full seasons, while new independent groups present niche works like modern musicals or even science fiction. Here’s a guide to this fall’s lineup.
‘End of Shift’
UM School of Theatre and Dance
(Oct. 2-5, 9-12)
The first play of the season on campus will be staged in the Masquer Theatre, the smaller, flexible black box space that lends itself to newer, contemporary works where the audience feels close to the action. This show, set in 2006, is contemporary enough that this happens to be the first full production after appearances on stages for readings and in workshops.
According to the school, the show centers on a guys’ night during the last weekend before their senior year of high school. While planning a memorial for a hometown hero, “hard truths come to the surface that force the group to wrestle with questions of romance, the line between chivalry and coercion, male role models, dating abuse and sexual assault,” MFA directing candidate Christopher Kehoe wrote in an email. He noted that they’ve invited the Student Advocacy Resource Center to a reading, and playwright Jenny Connell Davis has plans to attend on the opening weekend.
Details: UM’s Masquer Theatre, umt.edu/theatre-dance/season. Contains adult themes and language.
Dance on Location
UM School of Theatre and Dance
(Oct. 4-5)
Dance students kick off the fall season with site-specific works that take you around UM’s scenic campus. This year, they’ve invited choreographer Rachel Oliver Young, a Missoula native who’s been based in Denver after attending graduate school at the University of Colorado Boulder. She’s been back before to work with Bare Bait Dance; this time she’s got her pick of outdoor sites to develop new ideas.
Details: Oct. 4 at 5:30 p.m., Oct. 5 at noon. Starts at the Mansfield Mall, $10 minimum donation suggested, umt.edu/theatre-dance/season.
‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’
MCT Community Series
(Oct. 9-19)
Victor Hugo’s novel about a Quasimodo, a bell ringer in the famed Parisian cathedral, and his alliance with the Romani against oppressive authorities, was adapted first into a Disney cartoon and then into a live stage musical. Both have music by Alan Menken (“Beauty and the Beast” and many, many more) and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz (“Wicked”).
For this community series production, MCT is working with a choir of three dozen singers. The cast includes Enrique Mendez (MCT’s “Cinderella”) and Rachel Berger (“Beauty and the Beast”) as Esmeralda. Artistic director Joe Martinez is overseeing the show, with Sarah Sizemore co-directing.
Details: Missoula Children’s Theatre, mctinc.org. Equivalent of a PG-13 rating.
‘Cinderella’
Opera Montana
(Oct. 11-12)
The company is bringing its first statewide tour to Missoula’s Westside Theater this year with a production of Pauline Viardot’s “Cinderella.” The show, friendly toward all ages, includes production flourishes like video projections and a new English translation.
Details: Westside Theater, thewestsidetheater.com.
‘Stories of War’
Exit12 Dance Company
(Oct. 24-26)
This fall, Bare Bait Dance and its home venue, the Westside Theater, are hosting “Stories of War,” a collaborative dance-theater show that explores themes of military life created with professional dancers, local veterans and service members. Exit12 is a New York-based company co-founded by Roman Baca, an Iraq War veteran who’s performed in Missoula before with Ballet Beyond Borders. They’re setting up a residency here, with options for local participation, through a collaboration with Red Willow and the Rocky Mountain Ballet Theatre.
Details: Westside Theater, thewestsidetheater.com.
‘Anything Goes’
UM School of Theatre and Dance and School of Music
(Oct. 23-26, Oct. 30-Nov. 2)
Each year, theater and music students collaborate for a big, splashy musical on the proscenium stage of the Montana Theatre. This season, they’ve picked “Anything Goes,” a classic with music and lyrics by Cole Porter, which includes standards like “I Get a Kick Out of You.”
This is a 2022 revision by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman that was nominated for an Olivier Award for best musical revival. The story, set in the early 1930s, involves New Yorkers aboard a cruise, seeking love with expected mishaps and mistaken identities.
MFA directing candidate Chae Clearwood said she’s leaning into themes of disguise and revelation.
“Whether a sinner or saint, man or woman, gangster or minister, the passengers of this ship find love, truth, and success on this journey and realize that the lines between these examples aren’t as definitive as one might think. I look forward to taking the audience on this voyage and hope through humor, romance, and a bit of jazz, they can find revelation as well,” she wrote in an email.
Details: UM’s Montana Theatre, umt.edu/theatre-dance/season.
A year off for ‘The Rocky Horror Show Live’
Don’t shed tears on your black leather chaps, but this homegrown Missoula tradition, a live and rowdy version of the camp classic musical, won’t be happening this Halloween “due to factors beyond our control,” according to Reid Reimers, the production’s longtime director, figurehead and Frank-N-Furter. However, he did indicate in an email the Montana Actors Theatre will be back next year with a “bigger and sexier” incarnation of the show.
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‘The Banginsons Present: Inexplicable Sidenote’
(Oct. 29-30)
Melissa Bangs, who built a “Tell Us Something” entry into an autobiographical one-person show, “Playing Monopoly With God,” that she performed around the West Coast, has a new act, “The Bangingsons,” with her husband serving as DJ. This addendum of “inexplicable side notes” includes ghost stories and other Halloween fodder, according to hosting venue, the ZACC.
Details: ZACC Show Room, zootownarts.org.
10-minute plays on a theme
Room 131 Productions
(Nov. 8)
This local independent group, founded by longtime local actor-directors Salina Chatlain and Anna Stone, is assembling a night of staged readings by local writers. In an email, Chatlain said she’s a fan of using prompts to inspire writers and for this show has included some “very specific (and odd) criteria.”
The 10-minute plays must all share a title (“The Pickle Jar”), include the entire cast, plus some other features, like the death of one main character, a natural disaster or weather event, and more.
The performers include names that will be familiar to local theater-goers: Carrie Collier, Carmen Corona, Rick Martino, Jeff Medley, Bridget Smith and Anne-Marie Williams.
Any interested writers should head to Room 131’s website for the full rundown.
Details: Westside Theater, room131productions.com.
‘Lost & Found’
Montana Repertory Theatre
(Nov. 13-23)
The Rep, a professional company based at UM, has a series called “Plays on Tap” that brings theater out of the literal theater into real spaces, where the fourth wall feels porous or nonexistent. Last season, they picked businesses on the Hip Strip, where casts performed original plays by smart writers from around the country. This year, artistic director Michael Legg and company are setting up shop in the Missoula Art Museum, where the exhibits and galleries will provide the context for new stories.
The writers include Paul W. Kruse, Madeline Sayet, Habib Yazdi and Avery Deutsch. If you saw “Hip Strip Hijinks” last year, Kruse wrote the one set in Betty’s Divine where Jeff Medley played a cat in lederhosen. No spoilers here on the plots of these shows, but earlier this fall, Legg said they commissioned Sayet, a member of the Mohegan Tribe in Connecticut, to write a play in conversation with “Offerings from my Heart,” a solo exhibition by Stella Nall (Apsáalooke/Crow), a local artist who was named one of the state’s rising stars in the “19 Under 39” exhibition at the Montana Museum of Art and Culture. Elsewhere in the museum, photographer J.M. Cooper’s exhibition, “Adel Sheep Shearing,” about the yearly rite at a stock company, will no doubt provide an interesting mood board for one of the playwrights to work from.
Details: Missoula Art Museum, montanarep.org. Contains mature themes and language.
‘Future Tripping’
A Quantum Dream
(Nov. 20-23)
This relatively new independent theater group, A Quantum Dream, started up specifically to spotlight challenging scripts, particularly ones in the science fiction vein. According to co-founder Reggie Herbert, their next production is “Future Tripping,” by Brian Gene White, an award-winning actor/director who collaborated with NASA for years on a lecture series.
In an email, Herbert said the play, which premiered in 2022, centers on Maddie, a young woman with thoughts of suicide who “shows up on her estranged father’s front doorstep dragging her own murdered body, claiming she’s invented time travel.”
Herbert said they’re “taking care to approach the topic of self-harm and mental health in a way that is respectful, and serious, while also using humor and sparing a heavy hand to ensure that all audiences are able to enjoy and reflect on this healing journey.” They plan to have community suicide prevention partners involved.
Details: ZACC Show Room, aquantumdream.org, zootownarts.org.
Dance Up Close
UM School of Theatre and Dance
(Nov. 13-15)
See students perform original works by their peers, faculty and guest artists in a flexible setting with professional light and sound by the school design staff. With many choreographers’ styles and musical preferences in a single evening, the shows move quickly and showcase the diversity and accessibility of the art form. If you haven’t been to a contemporary dance performance before, it will remind you that you’ve seen it all the time in music videos, movies and more.
Details: Masquer Theatre, umt.edu/theatre-dance/season
‘A Few of My Favorite Things’
Bare Bait Dance
(Nov. 29-30, Dec. 4-7)
Since 2022, the company has thrown a holiday show with original choreography and collaborations that offers a counterpoint to traditional seasonal fare. This year, artistic director Joy French and company promise highlights from previous winter shows and some surprises, including present juggling. As with all of Bare Bait’s productions, expect the moods to range from humorous to contemplative, with challenging ideas that stay accessible.
Details: Westside Theater, thewestsidetheater.com.
‘Annie’
MCT Community Series
(Dec. 4-21)
MCT’s holiday show of the year is the classic story of an orphan taken in by a wealthy tycoon during the Great Depression that introduced classic tunes like “It’s the Hard Knock Life.” The three-week run is overseen by Abigail Gilbert, who directed MCT’s “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” in 2023.
Details: Missoula Children’s Theatre, mctinc.org.
Cory Walsh is the arts and entertainment reporter for the Missoulian.
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