Mudd Butts #28: It’s About Time

02 Aug Mudd Butts #28: It’s About Time

It may be children’s theater, but the Telluride Academy’s Mudd Butt Mystery Theatre Troupe has never shied away from the deep issues that confront the human condition.

Clay, Sally & Kim, putting this year’s Mudd Butts script together

Playfully woven into an often wacky story line enacted by middle-schoolers in wild costumes carrying exaggerated props, timeless issues such as love and death, betrayal and redemption, corruption and innocence are explored on stage. This year, in the Mudd Butts’ 28^th annual summer production, it is the “Idea of Time,” itself, which is brought into focus.

Based on the German novel “Momo” by Michael Ende, who wrote the “Neverending Story,” “Time” is considered as a commodity whose value increases as it grows scarce. In the deft hands of part-time Telluride resident and Hollywood scriptwriter Clay Frohman, “Momo and the Time Thieves” becomes both a delightful vehicle for the celebrated antics of the Mudd Butt actors, as well as a parable that will resonate beyond the play’s three-performance run.

Teaching

“I was personally drawn to the idea of time,” says Clay. “As individuals, we don’t know how much time we have. All we can do is the best we can with the time we have.”

For children who have yet to feel the telescoping speed of time as we age, the idea that will ring truest is the fact that their days are often so filled with directed activities and rushing around that they have little time left to play.

Propmeister extraordinaire Mike Stasiuk with Larkin Ward

So come prepared to think a little, but also to be entertained. There will be bowler hats and fat cigars, enormous lilies and a talking turtle. There will be a wise young protagonist and those evil time thieves who try to thwart her. As always, there will be cross-dressing and dancing, singing and acrobatics. And this year, a special treat: four-year Mudd Butt veteran Ava Minarovic, a young aerialist who studies her craft in Houston, Texas, will perform her art using hanging silks. When asked, for three words to describe her experience on stage this year, Ava smiled and almost sang out: “Muddy! Incredible! Fun!”

Ava Minarovic, aerial artist

For the uninitiated, the Mudd Butts are named for the state of one’s shorts after the troupe’s inaugural hike up Coronet Creek each summer and the obligatory slide down the red clay hillside on one’s rear end. Founded in 1987 by Sally Davis and Kim Epifano, the leadership expanded to include artist Mike Stasiuk in 1991 and Clay Frohman, a former Mudd Butt parent who both writes and plays music, in 2010.

For more pictures of the Mudd Butts in action, and to see Mike Stasiuk’s delightful work as an artist, check out his website http://www.michaelstasiuk.com/. Kim Epifano’s dance work can be seen on her site: http://www.epiphanydance.org/.

“Momo and the Time Thieves” can be seen Friday, August 8 (6pm) and Saturday, August 9 (2pm and 6pm) at the Michael D. Palm Theatre.

Tickets at the door ($12/adult and $5/Children under 12).

Stay after the last performance for Telluride Academy’s traditional fundraising auction and a chance to win one of the extraordinary handmade props.