The Last Baron of Arizona, 1988

The Last Baron of Arizona was written by one of our faculty and directed by another.

It was a Youth Theatre piece, which means that it was based in part on historical facts and had to have some great moral or message, which has been lost to me over time.

It had a large cast with some of our better actors of that time and I am sure they did a good job but I really do not remember much about the play. 

We had a student scene designer and if I remember correctly we reused part of another set, the raked stage from Androcles and the Lion, and added a few new pieces to it.

We only did one week of regular shows but three “Creature Features”, student matinees, at 10 AM the same week.

What fun.

I know I have photos from the play; I just have not scanned them.

When I was looking for photos of the play I came across one that I thought was from the play but turned out to be from one of the Children’s Theatre Mini Tour productions that we did about the same time as many of the same actors were in both plays.

The Play was Low Bridge: Stories, Songs and Sketches of the Erie Canal.

The play produced as part of a class and the students worked hard developing the Mini Tours as that spent half of the semester working on a script and the rest of the time they toured to local schools performing the play.

The set had to be simple as it had to fit in the back of a big 12 person van.

I often did the scene design for these plays or helped a student do it.

They would always do one performance of the show at the college which I liked because it meant that I did not have to go out to see the play at some elementary school full of little kids.

Now I do like little kids, but when you too many together they can be scary as they all have runny noses and carry some awful kid diseases.

We do not call the school matinees “Creature Features” for nothing.

I will  scan and add the image program for the Mini Tour here as soon as I can.

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