The Cheyenne Little Theatre Players (CLTP) recently won big at the American Association of Community Theaters’ (AACT) national festival. At the competition, the CLTP’s production of “The Outgoing Tide” won awards for best supporting actor and best set design, both for Jeff Tish, and an award for technical design. The play was directed by Lynn Dixon and featured Tish, Judy Schulz and Troy Rumpf in a cast of three.
The production was originally pitched to the CLTP by Jim Rolf. Rolf passed away in the spring of 2022, leaving the play in limbo for months, until Dixon was asked to direct it. After taking two months to decide, he agreed.
Dixon says this play posed a unique challenge for him. He had acted professionally for years, performing in productions of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Phantom of the Opera” all over the world, and has directed musicals in the past. However, this was his first time directing a non-musical play.
The play’s heavy subject material was also especially challenging, he said. “The Outgoing Tide” focuses on Gunner (Tish), a man struggling with Alzheimer’s disease, and his relationships with his wife (Schulz) and son (Rumpf).
Despite the story’s topic, Dixon said he felt the story had to be told.
“This is not [a play] where people go out whistling a tune or laughing about the punch lines. This is one where people go out thinking about ‘Where am I in this?’ because everybody either has someone in their family or knows someone,” he said.
The play was also quite emotional for the rehearsal team.
“We began around a table with scripts — just myself and Jeff and Judy and Troy — and we read the piece,” Dixon recounted, “And by the end of the play, all four of us were in tears. That will stick with me forever”
The play was performed in its entirety at the CLTP last November. Then, after the AACT’s Wyoming liaison encouraged them to take the play to competition, they began preparing for the regional round in March. The play had to be trimmed down to fit within a strict time limit of 60 minutes. They ended up winning at the regional level and became one of 12 teams to advance to the national round.
On top of preparing for nationals, however, the team also had to deal with money issues. The CLTP was encountering financial struggles, so the team made it a goal to pay for the competition themselves, Dixon said. They ended up raising $20,000 between March and June with the support of the local community, allowing them to attend the national festival in Louisville, Kentucky.
“We did our final performance in Louisville in front of an audience that expected us to be good,” Dixon said. “When my actors finished, I looked at my stage manager…and I said ‘Diane, that's probably the best performance energy-wise, we've seen.’”
Dixon attributes this performance, and the award-winning performances the production had given throughout the past few months, to the bond between the three castmates.
“They all had worked together, so they knew that they could trust each other. I think maybe that's why we were able to put together the product that we had is we trusted each other,” he said.
Now, Dixon hopes to create a guide for future groups from the CLTP to more easily prepare for the competition in the future. This was the first time since 2007 that the theater had made it to the festival’s national level. He also urges people across Wyoming to support their local community theaters, since that support is what allowed Dixon and his team to showcase their talent on the national stage.
