BELLE FOURCHE—A full house gathered at the Tri-State Museum to watch a local cast of seven perform an original play, Your Friend, Ida for the 1903 Reader’s Theatre on August 22 and 23.
Once again, Kristi Thielen, Museum Director and Playwright, delivered a witty, entertaining, original play set in the Belle Fourche area in the year 1958. It centered around a radio show host, Ida, and the day-to-day events of two groups of female friends and the impact the radio show had on their daily lives. The play is based on the original radio show called My Neighbor Lady which featured Wynn Speece as the host. The show ran for over 60 years and it was based out of Yankton.
To write the play Thielen had to spend time researching and understanding the impact of Speece’s show. “I read all of her books. The recipes and the household tips that you hear in the the script come from her books—so those are actual recipes and tips,” she explained.
Even though she has written many plays, Thielen still finds joy in watching her plays performed. She said, “I’ve been writing for a long time and it never stops being fun to see what people respond to.”
Having written the play just a month ago, Thielen had it ready in plenty of time for the cast to be selected and spend five days getting together and rehearsing it for the two-day performance. The cast is Bobby Ward as Dorothy Jorgenson, Joan Gerkin as Helen Wurtz, Lynnea Luebben as
Betty Fisher, Angela Hastings as Ida De Malignon, Patrick Luebben as Nick Abernathy, Colleen Anderson as Pearl Schumacher, and Sheila West as Maxine Zimmerman.
The play featured a vintage console radio that stood prominently in the center of the set. It was loaned to the museum for the play by Deb and Donald Elliott.
A nominal fee of $2.00 was charged to those without a museum membership and refreshments were served.
After the show—a special treat for those that enjoyed the program and wanted to learn more about Speece—the audience was encouraged to browse through a collection of books published by Speece and My Neighbor Lady that were filled with recipes and letters sent in from listeners. Angela Hastings gathered and shared the booklets.
The next theater production at the Tri-State Museum will be performed by the Tri-State Performers during Pumpkin fest in October.
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