Mighty Corson Art Players celebrate 40 years of community theater
Gracie Terrall/BV Journal
MCAP board members (from back left) Ryan Howe, Sara Harrington, Cindy Bakke and Dave Bakke. (From front left) Rose Rhead, Emily Wilson, Brian Schipper, Kylie Murray, Kelly Walker and Macie Lupica.
Martha Smith, one of the founding members of MCAP, chats with event attendees at MCAP’s 40th anniversary.
The original 100-year old hand painted curtain now hangs in the lobby of the Corson Playhouse. The curtain was unveiled during the 40th anniversary celebration after years in storage. Many of the businesses featured on the curtain are no longer opperating.
Kylie Murray and her husband Brad Vitek kick back during Elisabeth Hunstad’s performance.
The rain on Saturday sure didn’t damper anyone’s spirits at the 40th anniversary celebration of the Mighty Corson Art Players. Current and former MCAP members gathered with local theater enthusiasts at the Corson Theatre on Saturday, July 16 to celebrate and reminisce on the 40-year history of the community theater group.
“It’s been so much fun and exactly what we hoped it would be,” Cindy Bakke, board vice president and head of costuming said about the 40th celebration. “There’s lots of people from all of our eras here.”
The 100-year-old, hand-painted original curtain used in the 1920’s was unveiled during the Brandon Valley Area Chamber of Commerce ribbon cutting ceremony on Saturday as well.
The 8-foot by 15-foot curtain now calls the lobby ‘home’ where it’s displayed behind plexiglass for long-term keeping.
Surrounding the painted landscape scene in the middle of the curtain are 35 painted advertisements for local businesses. Since the curtain was painted and hung in the 1920’s, many of the businesses are no longer in operation today.
Garretson Hatchery and Produce, Holger Anderson Oil Co. and Valley Springs Motor Company are a sampling of the businesses that went out of operations sometime in the last 100 years. Miller Funeral Home, Josten Concrete Products and First National Bank are among the featured businesses still around today.
Dave Holly, host of The Dave Holly Hour podcast and Sioux Empire Arts and Entertainment conversations, attended the event. Holly frequents a variety of art scenes in the Sioux Falls area and speaks with the artists about their upcoming projects.
“We’re frequent guests,” Holly said of his interest in MCAP. “We’ve never been disappointed in a show we’ve been to at MCAP.”
Although there were two theater groups to inhabit the playhouse before MCAP, Dee Gulson, director of the first ever MCAP show, said the idea in 1982 was independent of the former playhouse occupants.
“It’s kind of fun how it happened,” she said. “It was a lot of ideas that came together and someone was like, ‘What about community theater, what about putting on a show?’”
Gulson reminisced about the early days of MCAP and how the first productions were more vaudeville style shows. Vaudevilles were often short, comedic skits that frequently involved songs and dances. Now, MCAP puts on three shows a season, as well as a children’s camp each the summer.
“It’s been a real evolution in lots of respects, not only in people and what they ended up doing, but also an evolution of the building because it was pretty rough,” Gulson said.
Over the years, the Corson Theatre has undergone multiple improvements to the building. Among the improvements is the addition of the lobby, bathrooms, an elongated stage, new basement access and a slanted auditorium.
“We want to show people the history of this theater and what it has to offer and how friendly everybody that’s involved is,” said Kylie Murray, MCAP board member who organized the event. “We don’t care if you want to paint, if you want to sit and watch, if you want to manage or shadow or work backstage. We want to show our theater and what we have and what we’re about. The community that we involve ourselves in is spectacular and the history of this place just makes it that much better.”
