Community Players open the Odd Couple Friday

Michele Shapero is no novice when it comes to entertainment.  

Working for 25 years as a business manager for several professional bands, singing professionally in popular dance bands and acting in roles as diverse as the tough girl Rizzo in Grease and good witch Glinda in The Wizard of Oz, Shapero has certainly earned her stripes in the field.

But this season she’s directing Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple at the Bigfork Center for the Performing Arts produced by the Bigfork Community Players. And it’s the first time she’s taken on the role of director.

“We as a board of directors decided this year that we were going to concentrate on comedies,” she said. “So we started out reading a lot of plays, looking for a few that we thought would tickle funny bones in Bigfork. Of all the plays I read, I liked this one best. We also decided that it was time we took control of our own plays. It was probably a bold step to offer to direct it.  But I knew that Neil Simon is a solid playwright and it’s difficult to go wrong with one of his scripts. And I also knew that I had Karen Kolar backing me up.”

Kolar is the executive director of The Odd Couple, mentoring Shapero and others in their first directing experiences. “I got into directing through a relatively low-risk route,” she said. Kolar used to be a fourth-grade teacher at Bigfork Elementary and every year her class would write and perform an opera. As the teacher, Kolar naturally assumed the role of director. But then she acted in a few plays in Kalispell with the college and in Bigfork with the Players. Eventually she tried her hand at directing and last season she had the opportunity to direct The Nerd by Larry Shue for the Players.

“It’s important for a theatre company to have good directors as well as good actors,” Kolar said. “People who have the opportunity to learn trust and share technique by working together. I’m happy with the path we are headed down in developing a complete and balanced theatre company and also with the enthusiastic participants I’m finding within our company, like Michele.”

“I’m having a great time,” Shapero said.  “The play is hilarious. Our two leading ladies are excellent, our supporting cast of women is solid, and the two Spanish brothers—well I know comic relief isn’t usually considered an element of a comedy, but when those two are added to the mix, the humor really goes over the top.”

Although it should look like everyone is moving naturally on the stage, there’s a lot of planning that goes into making those movements look natural. Every move needs a motivation and every location on stage has a different effect.  “I’m still learning about that,” Shapero said.

Shapero is not just the director. She’s also the set designer, the construction foreman, and her husband, Steve, is the producer and the sound technician.  Community theatre is really a family affair. Their son, Josh, is one of the Spanish brothers in the play.

The Odd Couple Friday, Oct. 24, at the Bigfork Center for the Performing Arts for one weekend only. Tickets are available online at www.BigforkCommunityPlayers.com, in Bigfork at the Pocketstone Cafe and Bigfork Drug, in Kalispell at the Grand Hotel, and at the door. Evening performances start at 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and matinee performances are at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. The play’s last performance is Sunday, Oct. 26.