Community Players perform "The Nerd" in Bigfork
“I’ve seen The Nerd twice,” she told me, “and both times, I laughed until my face was streaming with tears. The second time, there was a woman with an oxygen tank sitting near me. As I said later, only half joking, when I was laughing so hard that I was gasping for breath, I considered swiping her oxygen!”
I was speaking with Karen Kolar, director of The Nerd, a play by Larry Shue that opens April 4 at the Bigfork Center for the Performing Arts. The Nerd bears similarity to a better known play by Shue, The Foreigner, which I’ve seen an can attest to the comedic potential. “Larry Shue had a talent for constructing visually hilarious scenes,” Karen continued. “I admire how he has sophisticated plot development in his plays. And his shows always have a twist where audiences leave saying, ‘I didn’t see that coming’.”
The first production of The Nerd was in 1981, three years before the movie Revenge of the Nerds and over twenty years before television show The Big Bang Theory made nerdiness a charming affliction. In this play, nerd would be too strong a description for the character Willum Cubbert. Granted, as an architect, he spends his days at a drawing table, carefully and precisely detailing mundane structures emanating from the pedestrian minds of others and, in the words of his sometime girlfriend Tansy McGinnis, lacks the “gumption” to engage in either a relationship or a design. But nerd? That’s a term reserved for his war buddy, Rick Steadman. True, Rick did save his life in Vietnam, but one has to draw the line somewhere. And Rick is well on the other side of the line. The play, written in a time before nerds were accepted into mainstream society, uses Rick as an object lesson to impart gumption onto Willum. And, as with those nerd comedies that followed, the results are often hilarious.
But how does one assure the comedy will be good? “The Bigfork Community Players does well with comedies,” Karen notes. “I go to rehearsal knowing that I’m going to get a big dose of endorphins because I laugh and laugh and laugh. Every night, the actors come up with something new and goofy. All of the actors in this cast are very committed, talented, and into developing their characters to the fullest.”
“My directing strategy has always been to cast the show and then see where the actors take the characters,” she responds. “Together, we collaboratively shape the characters to what works the best for the overall production.”
Scott Roskam plays Axel, Willum and Tansy’s somewhat devious friend. In the scene they were rehearsing, Axel was trying to one-up Rick’s nerdiness, so I didn’t see the devious part. But I was reminded that Scott is quite a talented physical actor. And Willum’s frustration, exhibited by actor Blake Williams, was palpable as he listened to why Rick had deliberately burned a hole through his detailed rendering of a new design. The actors were just freshly off book, but I could tell that the collaborative comedic process was already well underway.
The Nerd opens April 4 at the Bigfork Center for the Performing Arts. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. on April 4, 5, 11, and 12 and at 2:00 p.m. on April 6 and 13. Tickets are $15 for adults; $10 for BCP members, students and seniors; and $5 for children under 12. They are available online at www.bigforkcenter.org, at Bigfork Drug, at the Kalispell Grand Hotel, from any cast member, and at the door. Attendees are advised to bring their own oxygen.