MAT developing comedic variety show

Montana Actors' Theatre will be putting on the Hill Country Revue Variety Show starting next week at the Little Theatre at Montana State University-Northern, a new production featuring music and comedy with an eye toward local humor.

MAT Artistic Director Grant Olson said the show will be in the same vein as "Hee Haw" or "Saturday Night Live," with a music act as a centerpiece, interspursed with skits and musical comedy set in an alternate version of Havre that kept the name Bullhook Bottoms.

"It's a loving look at our community, and poking fun in a positive way," Olson said.

He said the show's comedy was heavily inspired by the unique identity of Havre, and features familiar characters based on real community members, with multiple members of Havre's City Council playing fictional versions of themselves.

The show will take place around KNOG, an alternate universe version of KNMC which will tie the music acts and skits together into a comedy show that will be a bit different each of the three weeks of its run.

Olson said the music act for the first week will be local musician Matt Springer, a MAT regular who plays in multiple bands.

The second week will feature Fort Benton musical duo The Lucky Valentines, and Counting Coup will play the third week.

Olson said working on this project has been a very new experience for members of MAT's artistic team.

He said they are much more familiar with long-form productions, and are now attempting to develop skits as short as 30 seconds long in some cases, with immediately recognizable characters and fast-paced scenarios meant to keep the comedy going.

He said they have no shortage of material, and they've needed to really pare down what they include to make sure the comedy lands as consistently as possible across many skits.

"We have way too much material," he said.

Olson said they developed the scripts for these skits very differently from the way they normally produce things.

Instead of writing a script first, he said, the team would create the characters, and put them in scenarios to see what happens, improvising dialogue that would eventually inspire the scripts.

Because improvisation has been such a big part of the development process, he said, many aspects of the show still haven't fully crystalized.

"It won't be ready until we're almost performing it," he said.

Olson said the show will push some boundaries, but still stay "PG-13ish" so he thinks it will have a wide appeal in the community.

Shows will be at 8 p.m. at the Little Theatre at Northern Fridays and Saturdays for three weeks starting Jan. 19.