This weekend and next, the Ridgway-based theater troupe Minerva West is taking on a big piece of American drama — Death of a Salesman, by playwright Arthur Miller. The group says the classic story of Willy Loman still feels just as relevant today.
“I’ve been wanting to do Death of a Salesman my entire adult life,” said actor Edward Cating, who plays the lead role of Willy Loman. “We started working on this play over a year ago, and we think we have a really wonderful cast. We have a beautiful set. We are excited to produce a play that has been so serious and so much a part of American theater culture since the late 40s when it was written.”
For Cating, the themes of the play remain strikingly familiar. “It’s still as pertinent today as it was then,” he said. “Psychologically and interpersonally and in terms of the life of a family and the way that family relates to the larger culture and the disease of family that is sometimes inflicted upon people within it — those things are all just fresh and lively.”
Emma Kalff, who co-directs the play with Nick Coman, said she’s been captivated by stepping into the world of 1949. “The clothing is different, the language is different,” she said. “Even the way people carry themselves is different. I’ve just really enjoyed having the time to sort of sink myself into that and almost pull myself out of contemporary times to put this play on.”
Kalff said what she loves most about theater is the collaboration — and its fleeting nature. “There’s something really beautiful about all of the time and the hours that it takes collectively among a theater troupe to put something on,” she said. “It only lasts those few nights that it’s up. And I think there’s something really beautiful and meaningful about that.”
For Coman, that’s part of the power of community theater itself. “It allows community members to come together, to get to know each other, to be able to put on performances that either touch people’s lives or make people laugh or make people cry and bring people together,” he said. “It takes them out of their ordinary everyday and allows them to experience and live something else through someone else’s eyes, through someone else’s words.”
Cating agreed, saying months of rehearsal have built deep bonds among the cast and crew. “Over the course of well over 1500, maybe even approaching 2000 hours… you get to know one another really well,” he said. “You get to know people’s strengths, their weaknesses, their fears. And those things reflect on the community at large.”
Kalff said that’s especially true in Ridgway. “This is the place that I feel that I have the most, like, genuine, true community,” she said. “People really stick their necks out for each other. There’s a feedback loop — the theater troupe is strong because we already have a strong community in Ridgway. And then the experience that we have in community theater… those individuals go back out into the community having developed stronger bonds with each other and having a greater capacity to show up for each other.”
Death of a Salesman runs this weekend and next at the Ouray County Event Center, with evening shows Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. Tickets and more information are available at www.MinervaWest.org.
