Every Brilliant Thing Montana Tour 2019
By: Voice Lessons
Tags: Suicide, Montana, Travel, Suicide Prevention, Theatre

Every Brilliant Thing Montana Tour 2019

Days 15–21; East Helena, Boulder, Choteau, Belt, Helena Indian Alliance.

The way this tour has been laid out makes a lot more sense to me now that I’m all up in it. Being somewhat unfamiliar with Montana’s geography, it was tough for me to truly wrap my head around our tour route, so up until this past week, I’d been strictly picturing a succession of high school gymnasiums, Town Pumps, and irresistible slices of huckleberry pie. But this past week was when I realized exactly how diverse, unique, and magical this experience was actually going to be.

At the start of last week, we still hadn’t strayed very far from our home base in Helena. After that first show in White Sulphur Springs, all of our bookings had still been within an hour or two of the city; venues which were still close enough where, for example, when we realized upon arrival in East Helena that we’d forgotten the show laptop, Rosie could hop in our Dodge minivan to retrieve it from Castle Seitz. But it was this week that we finally got to take The Rysie Seitzenspergayers Express out for a test drive (Note: This portmanteau has not been approved by Rosie).

The gym at the Montana Developmental Center, Boulder, MT.

The week began with a few more semi-local shows in East Helena’s City Hall and Boulder’s Montana Development Center, respectfully, each of which felt both intimate and powerful. In East Helena, Mayor Jamie Schell greeted us and helped us set up the City Hall gym before a weekly Zumba class took over the room while we headed out for our pre-show dinner break.

At the MDC (a residency and treatment center for the developmentally disabled) in Boulder (pop. 1,248) the turnout looked like it was going to be terribly slight at first, until a group of five of the facility’s residents and their caretakers arrived and took up ten of our seats. These men seemed to truly enjoy the performance, smiling and laughing throughout, and I was honored to get to perform for them. That night, though, a reminder of the seriousness of this project came abruptly when during the emotional climax of the play, one of the caretakers stood up and stormed out of the gym. Once the show had finished, our host (local counselor/social worker/friend of Grandstreet Theatre’s), Pam Ponich, mentioned that the woman who’d left was a former co-worker of hers and had a son who’d taken his own life a few years earlier. I was immediately reminded of the weight of what we’re trying to accomplish with this project.

The following day, we packed our things and got ready to spend our first few real nights on the road, with shows in Choteau (pop. 1691) and Belt (pop. 588) before returning to Helena for a Saturday afternoon show at the Helena Indian Alliance.

Choteau is about a two-hour drive from Helena, and we arrived early and toured the County Courthouse and the public library before stopping into John Henry’s Restaurant for a cup of coffee. Talking with the teenage girl behind the counter, we asked what people do for fun in Choteau, to which she responded, “You want me to tell you the truth?” “Of course.” “We drive around and drink.” “Of course.” We paid for our coffees and headed to the venue. Our booking that night was at the beautiful Roxy Theatre, a gorgeous movie theater built in 1946, run by Larry and Sue Schilling for the past thirty years, who were incredibly hospitable, even preparing a cooler of food and water for us backstage.

The Roxy Theatre, Choteau, MT.

I was performing the show that night and the show was unusual for me, as it was the first time I’d performed it on a formal, raised stage, rather than in the round. Nonetheless, the theatre was so beautiful, the company so friendly, and the popcorn (with real butter!) was so delicious that I couldn’t help but feel like there was a special energy in the house that night. A great show with another powerful talkback.

Roxy Theatre, Choteau, interior.

Once we’d loaded out of the Roxy, we were booked to spend the night at a Town Pump Super 8 in Conrad, about 30 miles north, so we made our way up, and promptly passed out.

Rosie vs. The Arvidsons.

Waking up in Conrad, I skipped the motel breakfast and wandered around taking photos instead. Conrad had its own cool vintage movie theatre, The Orpheum, as well as several homey looking breakfast joints. Once she’d gotten up Rosie and I decided to split a steak and eggs at The Home Cafe, where we were waited on by the grand-daughter of the founders, whose pictures were on the wall, of course.

Arriving in Belt that afternoon, we were welcomed by a friend of Rosie’s named Jeff Ross, who’s been in Belt for the past ten years teaching English and theater at the local school and has been one of the main forces behind the effort to revitalize the Belt Performing Arts Center, which was originally built as a movie theater in the 1930s, turning it into a modern facility and starting the Belt Valley Shakespeare Players. Also at the Performing Arts Center to greet us was Amy Olson, who was going to be hosting us at our first homestay for the trip. Amy’s presence was breezy and welcoming, helping us load in, and then telling us how her husband Jim, who was also the mayor of Belt, was going to throw the chicken on the grill at 4:30, if that was fine with us. It was totally fine with us.

After load-in, we headed over to Jim and Amy’s house to freshen up and drop off our stuff and were both stunned by how welcoming and adorable it was. Dinner was local Hutterite chicken, home-canned beets, alfalfa sprouts, salad greens, and broccoli salad. By far our favorite meal on the trip to date.

The show was small but powerful, with a row of teenagers right in the middle of the house…Rosie made the smart choice of enlisting one of them to play her sweetheart, which kept the rest of them giggling and engaged for the duration. Once the show was finished, the talkback was powerful and somewhat solemn, as usual, as several members of that row of teenagers mentioned that they had friends who had died by suicide, but they preferred not to talk about it. Nonetheless, we were both grateful that they were there, and that they’d been willing to share.

Belt Performing Arts Center

Once the show was finished and we’d loaded out, it was Friday night in Belt, at the beginning of rodeo weekend, so we decided to hit the town just a bit. I’d heard good things about Harvest Moon Brewery’s “Beltian White” and wanted to try it, but we first had to take a lap and see what this little town was all about.

For an hour or so, Rosie and I wandered around, feeling the anticipation of the campers in town for the rodeo as the giant B on the side of the hill lit up while the sun went down. After crossing the river to check out the rodeo grounds and the East Side Bar and Cowboy Casino, we returned to Castner Street, the main drag where the Performing Arts Center, the Olsons house, the Harvest Moon, and almost everything else in Belt sits. The Beltian White was delicious, by the way, tasting even better since it was bought for me by Del Darko, a rickety old cowboy and friend of Mayor Jim’s who never stopped laughing as he told me about his childhood spent riding broncos.

The next morning, I started paging through Jim and Amy’s collection of Montana books and was beautifully surprised to learn that “The Mother and Father of Belt,” were an interracial couple, John and Mattie Castner. The “Mother of Belt” was an African-American woman born Mattie Bell Bost. Born into enslavement in North Carolina in 1849, and Mattie was emancipated in 1864 and made her way to St. Louis, where she worked as a nanny until, hearing tales of the “golden opportunities” in Montana, hopped a steamboat for the two-month voyage up the Missouri to Fort Benton, where she took over the operations of their laundry service. By the next year (1879) she was the owner of her own laundry, and began a flirtation with a young mining entrepreneur from Pennsylvania named John Castner. It was Castner who had discovered the coal reserves near the Belt Butte (named by Lewis and Clark after the ‘belts’ of dark rocks which run through it) and had begun carting it to Fort Benton to be sold.

Unfortunately, no images of Mattie Castner exist. Either that or she’s hiding behind that beard.

After the two married, they built the first permanent structure in Belt, a hand-hewn cabin, which over the next few years, grew into an entire complex of buildings known as The Castner Hotel. 33 miles outside of Fort Benton, travelers on the stagecoach line could get reliably good food, drinks, and lodging at the Castner, and as the camp grew into a good-sized town (at the turn of the century, there were 3,000 residents including miners from Finland, Wales, Norway, and Italy), and so did the Castner’s fortune.

During this time, Mattie traveled back to North Carolina to try and find her lost siblings (she was one of five whom slavery had separated) but was only able to find one, a sister whom she brought back to Montana with her. Mattie Castner’s generosity wasn’t only extended towards her family, though. As the Castner Hotel (and Belt) flourished, the Castners adopted a child who’d been abandoned at the hotel, as well as donated land for the construction of churches and schools in their nascent town. Once Belt was incorporated in 1907, John Castner was the obvious choice for mayor, was elected unanimously, and served for the first three years of the town’s existence. When John died in 1915, he left the majority of his fortune to Mattie, who, by the time she died (in 1920), was worth the equivalent of close to $1 million in today’s money, most of which she left to local charities. In 1989, she became the first African-American to be added to the Gallery of Great Montanans, located here at the capitol building in Helena.

As I sat in Jim and Amy Olson’s beautiful, comfy living room, surrounded by pictures of their children, vintage firearms, and Montana history books, I was struck by the fact that I was now experiencing that same signature Belt hospitality, and even being hosted by the current mayor and his wife. It was one of those magical, time-traveling moments, where you realize that despite their wi-fi, organic beets, or automatic coffee maker, there are certain things which have never changed, and don’t really need to; things like hospitality, good food, good conversation, and oddly enough, the beard on the face of the mayor of Belt, Montana.

Jim and Amy Olson, Belt, MT.

Brilliant Things to add to the list this week:

#1,000,001: Returning home to pick up something you forgot and catching your dad napping.

#1,000,002: Old movie theaters with cool marquees.

#1,000,003: Popcorn with real butter, not just butter flavored oil.

#1,000,004: Pictures on the walls of local diners.

#1,000,005: Making new friends that you know immediately you’ll stay in touch with forever.

#1,000,006: The first letter of a town’s name in rocks on the side of a hill.

#1,000,007: Looking through the books at the house where you’re staying.

#1,000,008: Reading about badass women in history and realizing that male dominance is obviously a myth.

#1,000,009: The fact that just maybe the position of Mayor of Belt, Montana’s works a little like the movie “The Santa Clause.”