For a small town on the western edge of North Dakota, Belfield has an unusual claim to theatrical fame. The Belfield Theater and Performance Center, at 113 1st Ave NW, was the first theater in North Dakota to have a big screen. It was also the first in the state to install Cinemascope projection and magnetic sound — top-of-the-line equipment in 1950. The owner wanted seating to match, so he asked what kind of chairs Radio City Music Hall used and ordered the same ones for his own house. On opening night, congratulatory telegrams arrived from Hollywood names including Esther Williams, Vaughn Vance and Red Skelton. The building, styled in a simple art deco motif and largely built by the owner himself, who laid all the brick, still wears its original working marquee.
That history is the backdrop for the theater's next live production. Cat Wranglers Productions, a Dickinson-based nonprofit community theater company, will perform "Curse of the Werewolf" by Tim Kelly on Oct. 16 through Oct. 18. It is the company's second play of the year at the Belfield Theater, following a spring staging of Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple: Female Version."
The play is a mix of comedy, horror and whodunit mystery, built around an eccentric group of family members and neighbors plagued by a murdering werewolf. Director Jackie Hope calls it a farce, and she is candid about what that demands of a cast.
"Imagine a comedy on steroids," she said. "There are no geniuses in a farce — everyone is silly, but they take themselves very seriously."
"It's a challenge for actors," Hope continued. "They have to believe their people are real, even though the roles are outrageously funny or silly."
The selection of this particular script was deliberate on several fronts. It serves as a pre-Halloween outing for local families, and it follows the Dracula and Frankenstein plays the company performed at the Belfield Theater in previous years — a run of gothic titles that audiences have come to expect from the fall slot. Hope said people had suggested to her the idea of putting on a play about a werewolf.
There was also a practical obstacle. "This play has 13 characters in it, and it's hard to get 13 actors on stage together," Hope said. "We held onto this play for at least five years, waiting until we hit the sweet spot for talent."
This fall, by her reckoning, marked that sweet spot. Many past Cat Wranglers performers have returned for the production, including Dr. William Hansard, Don Ehli and Ryan Stuhaug. Hope herself has a role while also serving as director. Audiences will also see new talent the company has picked up this fall.
One of those newcomers is Jake Streitz, whose only prior acting experience was three years of high school drama. Ehli suggested he audition. Streitz missed the auditions because he was busy at the time, but Hope called him a day later and told him, "I got a spot with your name on it."
"I don't like being up on stage," Streitz said. "I just figured I'd give this a shot because why not?"
"It's been fun," he added. "This is a good group of people and they're fun to work with."
Margaret Barnhart, who has been in most of the plays Cat Wranglers has put on at the Belfield Theater, said attendees can expect light-hearted laughter along with some frights. She framed the appeal in straightforward terms: it is a fun time for families, and it is not terribly expensive.
"It's just a wonderful thing to do to get out, and it's not terribly expensive," Barnhart said.
Streitz made a broader case for turning out. "There's not a lot of things for families to go out and do anymore," he said. "We need more fun things like this for the whole family to enjoy — live theater is a blast to watch."
The playwright behind the script had a long and unusually prolific career in exactly this kind of theater. Tim Kelly was born in Saugus, Massachusetts, on Oct. 2, 1931, graduated from Emerson College and earned a master's degree in play-writing from Yale University. He wrote more than three hundred plays — comedies, dramas, one-acts, mysteries, melodramas, children's shows and musicals — making his living largely by writing for the stock, amateur and educational markets rather than Broadway. His publishers included Samuel French, Pioneer Drama Service and Contemporary Drama Service, and he wrote under at least four pseudonyms in addition to variations of his own name. His first stage play, "Widow's Walk," was published in the 1960s. He died in Los Angeles on Dec. 7, 1998.
That career path is why a title like "Curse of the Werewolf" exists at all: a script engineered for community and school stages, flexible enough for a 13-person cast and a small-town auditorium, and durable enough that a company can hold it in reserve for five years until the right group of actors comes along.
The Belfield Theater's own story is one of survival as much as showmanship. Its stated purpose is to enrich, entertain, educate and engage the community with cinema and performing arts, and its revitalization is framed as an effort to create a regional cultural center and a gathering place for community connectivity. The theater's own appeal to the public puts it plainly: the building has been the glue connecting community members, and the goal is to keep that small-town movie and stage experience alive for other generations.
For three nights in mid-October, that means a werewolf. The production runs Oct. 16 through Oct. 18 at the Belfield Theater and Performance Center, 113 1st Ave NW, Belfield. Ticket prices for this production were not posted on the venue's website at the time of writing; for the company's spring show at the same venue, tickets were sold at the door at $15 for adults and $10 for students and seniors.