TO PUT UP the stage, the firetruck had to be backed out of the garage.
When bulbs in the overhead lights burned out, floodlights were borrowed to light the stage.
And whenever the fire siren went off during a performance, people got up and left.
“The fire chief was our light person,” Marji Mueller said. “If he left, someone replaced him.”
For more than 25 years, sisters Marji and Kathi Mueller have put on a Christmas play at the Brinnon Booster Club, come what may.
“We always do one the first weekend in December,” Marji said. “Sometimes, we only do one in a year. That’s the one we do.”
The tradition started 26 years ago when the Muellers, who are Brinnon natives, and Charles Duncan decided to start a community theater.
Marji and Kathi had both been involved in theater productions when they were in college.
Theater abroad
Duncan, an actor who lived in Brinnon at the time, is from England and had done theater there.
Wanting to continue to trod the boards, they formed the Brinnon Community Theater.
That first Christmas, they put on “The Stargazer” at the Brinnon Booster Club with Charles and Kathi playing the innkeeper and his wife and Marji directing.
They have staged “The Stargazer” two more times: on the BCT’s 10th and 20th anniversaries, with Charles, who now lives in Chimacum, and Kathi in their same roles.
“The last time they did it, they said they didn’t know how much longer they could,” Marji said. “They might forget the lines.”
The Brinnon Booster Club is also the birthplace of the town’s volunteer fire department.
The “big red barn” where it was based doubled as the playhouse, so before the new fire station was built, the firetruck had to be moved out and the stage assembled before each production.
Brinnon Fire Chief Mel Herod operated the light board, Marji said, but had a substitute ready to step in if he was called away.
While volunteer firefighters in the audience have gotten up and left, it is an urban legend that members of the cast have done so.
“They weren’t on call,” Marji said.
This year’s play, “The Rented Christmas,” is about a wealthy bachelor who wants to rent a family for the holidays.
Sean Ware plays the bachelor, with Kathi Mueller as his housekeeper and Jenny Loring as the cook.
Meghan Draper and Zach Zelen are the rental store manager and assistant.
Jeremy Mueller, Kathi’s son, plays the bachelor’s co-worker.
Robin Lakeness is the director of the orphanage that provides the children after actors hired for the occasion fail to show up.
Show must go on
But that doesn’t happen in the Brinnon Community Theater, where the show must go on.
Actors have had opening-night jitters, Marji said, but it was flu, not nervousness, that caused them to throw up backstage.
One year, a cast member had an appendectomy the day of the show but checked herself out of the hospital in time to make her entrance.
The stage direction was somewhat modified, Marji said: Instead of falling to the floor in a faint, the actress was allowed to fall into someone’s arms and be placed on a chair.
In this year’s play, Ruby Jean Murray, Brook Raynor and Daniel Johnson play the orphans.
The sets are adapted for each production, Marji said, with costumes provided mainly by the actors.
For last Christmas’ production of “Little Women,” however, the Muellers enlisted Nora Burwash, a Brinnon resident who makes antebellum costumes.
Period dramas
“Meet Me in St. Louis” and “Never Trust a City Slicker” are some of the period dramas staged.
“Some are full-length plays; sometimes they are selection of one-act plays,” Marji said. “This year, it is one act with six scenes.”
Creative talent runs in the family: Marji and Kathi’s mother, Ruth Dorr Mueller, was a writer, newspaper correspondent and community theater impresario who put on plays in the Brinnon School gym when the girls were little.
Marji and Kathi both attended Aurora College in Illinois, their mother’s alma mater, where Marji was an academic assistant in the theater department.
Both went into education, Kathi at Brinnon School and Marji at Quilcene Schools, where she puts on plays with elementary and high school students.
Hope for speaking part
The younger kids are eager to participate and in the hopes of landing a speaking part have been known to develop an interest in improving their reading skills, Marji said.
While high school students aren’t always as enthusiastic about school plays, being in a community theater production evokes a high level of commitment.
And unlike many community theater groups, everybody doesn’t want to direct.
“You have to go to all the rehearsals,” Marji said. “It’s nicer to be in it.”
Only one time did the players have to cancel performances, she said.
That was three years ago, when a snowstorm hit the first week of December.
No one, including the actors, could get to the clubhouse, but eventually, the show did go on.
“We did it the following weekend,” Marji said. “We didn’t want to spend all that time and not do it.”
After each performance, the double doors are opened to the hall, where refreshments are served and the door prize ticket drawn.
The Muellers keep putting on plays because it’s fun, Marji said, and has become a tradition.
“It’s not just a Christmas party,” she said. “It adds to the Christmas events here.”
“The Rented Christmas” is Friday at 7 p.m., with repeat performances on Sunday at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m..
Tickets are $5 per person and cover the cost of royalties and scripts.
The play lasts one hour and is suitable for all ages.
Booster club
The Brinnon Booster Club is located at 151 Corey Lane. From U.S. Highway 101, turn on Brinnon Lane (the Halfway House Restaurant corner), left on Easy Street, which runs behind the restaurant, and right on Corey Lane.
For more information, phone 360-796-4910.
Also brightening the Brinnon holiday season is the light display at Whitney Gardens and Nursery, which borders Highway 101 in Brinnon.
Visitors can drive the loop through the gardens or park and walk around the grounds, owner Ellie Sather said.
The trees and structures are decorated with half a million lights, which are lit at 4:30 p.m. and stay on until 9 p.m., 10 p.m. closer to Christmas.
There is no admission charge, but visitors are asked to bring a donation for the Brinnon Food Bank.
Stuffed Santa
“The box is by the house next to the Santa,” Sather said. “We don’t have real Santa, just a stuffed Santa.”
Whitney Gardens is also a family production.
Founded by Bill Whitney in 1955, it was purchased by Ellie’s parents, George and Ann Sather, in 1970.
For more information about the gardens, visit www.whitneygardens.com.
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Jennifer Jackson writes about Port Townsend and Jefferson County every Wednesday. To contact her with items for this column, phone 360-379-5688 or email jjackson@olypen.com.
