Martin City Melodrama still original after 25 years

A person does not start a theater and run it for 25 years without a serious devotion to the craft.

But Jeanne Beechwood knows her success depends much more on levity than seriousness.

The first order of business at the Martin City Melodrama and Vaudeville Co. in the Metcalf South Mall is to create and present shows that are fun.

“Sometimes people will ask what a show’s message is. There is no message. It’s just about having fun and making people laugh,” she said.

As final preparations for the 25th new season and the theater’s 120th original show are being made, Beechwood said she is no less motivated than the day she started.

“The plan is to keep doing what I’m doing no matter where that might be. I absolutely still love it,” Beechwood said in all seriousness. And then she quickly added with a laugh, “I don’t know, maybe that’s because I don’t know how to do anything else.”

For more than half her life, Beechwood indeed has done nothing else professionally than theater work.

After graduation from the University of Missouri-Kansas City with a degree in theater arts, she began an acting career that had her appearing in theaters throughout the city and in several surrounding states.

But Beechwood wanted something that an actress’s life too seldom provides, stability. So, rather than relying on whatever roles and opportunities might come along, the Overland Park native decided to create her own destiny.

In 1985, at age 28, she signed a one-year lease on a former church building in the Martin City area of south Kansas City so she could establish a theater. Thus was born Melodrama and something of a local rebirth for the vaudeville age.

That lease turned into a 16-year stay. Nine years ago, she relocated to the Metcalf South Mall because deterioration of the old place was eating up too much time and money.

The theater proved to be just what Beechwood wanted professionally, and for a quarter century now she has been the primary writer, performer, business manager and organizer of the venture.

Amy Gillman, who acted in the theater’s first production in the original building and is co-directing the latest show, always has been impressed with Beechwood’s creativity and energy.

“I think she is fabulous because her brain is going all the time, and you can see her creating all the time. She just never stops,” Gillman said. “For people who never have done this kind of theater before it is very hard for them, because it’s all original material.”

Beechwood said she realized soon after opening the original theater that she did not want to operate a venue serving beer, wine and food as well as shows featuring adult-oriented material.

Instead, she took aim at filling a family theater niche, and has never regretted the decision.

From the outset, the theater has been a family affair both in terms of show content and production staffing. She and her husband, Dan Hall, have written most of the material for the theater’s shows. They met when she still was working as an actress and he was on the Unicorn Theatre board.

Her parents, Richard and Ellen Beechwood, also have been major cogs. Ellen has accomplished the rather incredible feat of stitching together almost every costume ever worn on the theater’s stages.

Over the course of 25 years, that has amounted to about 30,000 outfits. Some of those are stashed at the theater, but most of are kept in Jeanne’s basement.

The theater’s quarters are spacious, but only about a fourth of the area is occupied by the stage and audience seating area. Much of the rest is used for storage of backdrops, furnishings and props that have accumulated from all those past shows.

The hundreds of used backdrops are carefully folded and neatly stacked atop long rows of tables.

Need to create a scene featuring a log cabin in the snow? If so, Beechwood will scan a sheet listing where every backdrop is stored in hopes of finding a previously used item that will work. It seldom proves helpful.

“We have all these drops that we could use again, but they almost never are quite what we need,” she said.

So, rather than settle for an archived oldie that almost fills the bill, Beechwood or one of her artistic helpers go to work designing exactly what she wants.

A host of other props also are constantly being fashioned by Beechwood and her only full-time assistant, Kattie Post.

The opening show of this newest season is typical Martin City Melodrama fare. It is a three-part holiday-themed production featuring shows that are parodies of classics.

One part of the show is “A Ridiculously Reduced Christmas Carol!” Beechwood and local actor Clint Griffey are the only two performers of the much-altered Charles Dickens classic, but they will portray a total of 57 characters.

Another segment of the show is “The Cinderella Opera, or, The Shoe Must Go On.” Beechwood calls it “an original musical operetta that mixes up musical styles from Bach to Beyonce.”

The third segment will be a holiday vaudeville revue featuring songs, sketches and gags. Part of the musical entertainment is a Water Glass Symphony that involves several performers tapping out tunes on glass containers of diverse shapes and sizes that are filled with varying amounts of water to produce just the right pitch.

The theater is a nonprofit entity that has broadened into new and varied roles. Martin City Jr. is a children’s theater that now is in its eighth season. It was one of only two children’s theaters in the nation invited to perform in the New York International Fringe Festival in 2006.

There also is an education aspect to the operation. The Komedy Kidstitute provides after-school classes for children in classic comedy skills, improvisation, pantomime, acting and melodrama.

All the activity sounds demanding, and it is.

“You get used to this and so involved in it that it becomes your child,” said Beechwood, who added that her 11-year-old daughter Cassandra has come to accept and understand that her only sibling is the theater.

“I found out after I started the theater that it involves a lot more work than I thought it would be,” Beechwood said. “But I don’t want the audience to know that or be thinking about that. I just want them to sit back and have a good time.”

FAST FACTS

Martin City Melodrama kicks off its new season on Nov. 13 with a three-part “Christmas Extravaganza.” Performances run through Jan. 3. Regular admission is $10.99 to $12.99. For information about show times, tickets and directions, call 642-7576, or go to www.martincitymelodrama.org. The theater is on the lower level of Metcalf South Mall at 95th Street and Metcalf Avenue.

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