Tent Theatre
Gilmore is gratified as tent show scores, Leader & Press August 4, 1963
"’Everything has run very smoothly,’ said Dr. Gilmore, in some surprise. ‘We have had not less than a full house for every performance,’ he said. ‘High Button Shoes,’ the season’s second production and first musical, was such a tight fit for the eight-night run in the 210-person capacity tent it was extended to Sunday night of the second week.
"Something like that may be required for the season’s final offering, ‘Little Mary Sunshine,’ a spoof of Frimlish and Herbertian operettas which Gilmore had found ‘hilarious’ in rehearsal. It’s slated to run Wednesday through Saturday nights, this week and next.
"’We did not expect the type of response that we got,’ admitted Dr. Gilmore. ‘We thought we’d just barely get the thing off the ground this summer.’ As a result of the surprise crowds, the project may well become self-supporting the first season -- something the college administration definitely did NOT require in approving the plans, Dr. Gilmore said. Admission is $1 per person, regardless of age.
"’Some people have said we should raise our prices. That’s not the idea,’ the director said. ‘This is an educational project. We’re not aiming for the theater fan; we’re after people who have never seen live theater.’ The project’s biggest single expense is the $2100 green and tangerine tent.
"In addition to Dr. Gilmore and Dr. Leslie Irene Coger, SMS professor of speech who had directed two of the four plays, there are four paid student assistants and a technical director, Ishmael Gardner. Besides these, the company includes 15 students taking the course (Theatre Practicum) for credit, including four working toward master’s degrees through the University of Missouri. Two students are taking the course for fun.
"The fun turned out to be hard work, especially early in the season when some students found themselves appearing in the opener, ‘Come Blow Your Horn,’ at night and rehearsing ‘Shoes’ or ‘The Miser’ afternoons; helping Gardner on set construction in between. That’s the only weakness Dr. Gilmore sees in the first season. A larger company, say around 30, would permit a two-platoon system avoiding simultaneous performing and rehearsing. ‘We may have a larger company, but we’ll never have a better company,’ Gilmore declared. ‘Because these people knew this was the first year, and because they knew they were a small group, they put out that extra effort to make a thing like this a success.’
"The tent’s too hot for matinees or rehearsals so rehearsing is done in the auditorium, described by Gilmore as ‘somewhat cooler, but not much.’ The tent actually is two tents, ends laced together so that a 30-foot center section could be added for expansion -- which would double the 210-person capacity and provide backstage dressing rooms, now in a separate tent. The tent’s colors were suggested by the maker (Joplin’s Coglizer Tent and Awning Company) as being the most fade-resistant and they fit in well with advertising.
"Dr. Gilmore, a member of Springfield Little Theater since he came to SMS in 1959, and a past president, would like to see that group tackle summer theater. ‘Theater in the Ozarks’ was the title of his doctorate dissertation, completed at the University of Minnesota in 1961, two years after he came to SMS. Armed with a tape recorder, he gathered recollections of natives old enough to recall entertainment of the 1885-1910 era he was covering…’Baptisms, spelling bees, and church sings, these are all things which took the place of plays, which weren’t presented for religious reasons or because the theater people just couldn’t get to places off the railroad.’
"The fact that Dr. Gilmore is an Ozarkian didn’t hurt his research reception in the hill country. Gilmore, 36, was raised by his grandparents on a farm near Ash Grove after his mother died when he was two. His grandmother, Mrs. Eva Dunlap, lives in Ash Grove. His father, Herbert F. Gilmore, a retired railroader, lives on South Campbell. In 1943, he graduated from Ash Grove High School, where he studied vocational agriculture. Instead of farming, he turned to work as an auto brake mechanic before entering the Navy in 1945. He wound up on Guam, after the war was over, as a carpenter’s mate making propeller crates which he is sure wound up being dumped in the ocean.
"Returning here in 1946, he entered SMS on the GI bill, a commerce major. In a summer speech course, he volunteered as a curtain-puller and landed in the cast of a later play. He added speech as a second major and met a Springfield speech student, Martha Lyons, in 1949. They were married the following year. Gilmore taught eight years in St. Louis County, four at Fairview High School, where his first year teaching chores included English, speech, debate, dramatics, and creative writing, and four at Webster Groves High School.
"He serve one year as director of Webster Groves Theater Guild, a season in which he directed five Guild and five school plays in nine months. He worked as summertime and part time announcer for radio station KFUO in Clayton. Gilmore earned his master’s at St. Louis University in 1954 and taught drama two years at Minnesota University, while working on his doctorate, before returning to SMS.
"He lists his other interests as camping, which he shares with his wife and children, Julie and Tom, students at Greenwood, and Mickie, who will enter kindergarten there this fall, carpentry and photography. The carpentry stems from his vo-ag and Navy days and came in handy for set construction in early teaching days when he built furniture they couldn’t afford to buy. ‘As for photography, I was dissatisfied with stage pictures so I started taking my own and it developed into an interesting hobby.’"
Dr. Gilmore wrote Ozark baptizings, hangings, and other diversions: theatrical folkways of rural Missouri, 1885-1910 that is available through the library. For a history of the tent theater, visit the MSU website.
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