June 8, 15, 1952
Players
The Players work; the Players play,
Starting now and all through May,
They act, they dance, they sing and eat;
They also work to make complete
The show that Mountaineers all claim
Gives to us our well earned fame.
But attention, one and all!
Pay close heed to this call!
Come, join with us and share the fun
Bless you, we’ve got work for everyone—
Sets to build and trails to clear
We’ve lots you can do, never fear.
So come on ahead and join the crowd,
Help us to do the job up proud;
Make a date for May weekends,
Come to Kitsap; bring your friends
If work and play are up your alley,
Come and help us do “Green Valley.”
Anon., Mountaineer Bulletin, May 1952
“When a spring starts bubbling again in the valley, everything begins to grow in great profusion. Enormous wheelbarrow-size vegetables and sunflowers grew higher than the cabin on the stage. But the new dam is going to flood the valley.” Such is the premise of Green Valley by Frank Wattron, a delightful comedy-fantasy, directed by Lucille Fuller.
The giant sunflowers were molded of plaster-of-paris, with their stems carved from wood. No one realized how heavy plaster-of-paris can get when wet until the day the sunflowers were rained on and the stems began making cracking sounds. The soggy sunflowers had to be rebuilt, using lighter material.
The huge vegetables in the show were “too good to throw away” so they’ve hung in the prop shed, waiting for a second chance at dramatic immortality.
“The great novelty of the show was Minnie, the fabulous cow, who was never seen but certainly heard, mooing happily or angrily, on cue. After each performance the audience gathered around the cow shed to meet Minnie, and then discovered much to their delight that Minnie’s innumerable on-cue “moo-o’s” were made by an expertly manipulated toy teddy bear.”
The Mountaineer, 1952