We, the Bigfork Community Players, are determined to do community theater well. A performance should leave the actors proud for having left the audience delighted. Hearty laughter at the comic lines is essential. Tears at the touching moments are appreciated. Rapt silence at the climactic conclusion is expected. But that’s not enough. When the final lights go out or the final curtain falls, the audience has to be changed for the better. Changed in the sense of being excited to live life fuller or relieved that, compared to the characters onstage, their own life decisions have been wiser. Shared experience makes us closer, makes us a community. Community theater provides shared experience.

We finish this season with Robert Harling's tragic comedy, Steel Magnolias, where we learn that, in both the best and worst of times, in both pain and pleasure, there is comedy. Wild hilarious comedy.