Port Polson Players open season with "The Schoolhouse Blizzard"

The Port Polson Players introduce their 51st summer season with the regional premier of Lynn Thomas’s “The Schoolhouse Blizzard,” staged June 5-14 at the Theatre on the Lake.

This piece of American history from the late 1800s centers on a teacher and her seven students, stranded in a schoolhouse when a mid-winter thaw turns deadly in a moment.

“At first glance, this show is about the weather and the need for advanced notice,” says director Anna Loehrke. “Digging a little deeper, you’ll see that it’s also a story around the impact a teacher can have in a small rural midwestern town.”

Loehrke, the daughter of Port Polson Players producers Neal and Karen Lewing, flew to her hometown of Polson from Cincinnati  to direct what her mother describes as an “incredible hunk of U.S. history.”

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History reports that the morning of Jan. 12, 1888, dawned with unseasonably mild temperatures that lulled Great Plains residents outdoors without their coats. By mid-afternoon, a massive storm arrived, bringing rapidly falling temperatures, 60-mile-an-hour winds, and heavy snow with drifts of up to 15 feet. One weather station recorded the temperature at 44°F at 2 p.m., −11°F at 9 p.m. and an overnight low of −42°F.

According to Loehrke, the play is filled with plenty of humor, as well as appropriate pathos since it takes place in a blizzard that went down in U.S. history as the world's 10th deadliest winter storm on record. The cast ranges in age from 7 to 15, which was typical of the attendees of many one-room schoolhouses in the 1800s.

Curtain times are 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays, June 5-14. Call 406-883-9212 or visit portpolsonplayers.com for reservations.

The Players’ season continues with “The Woman in Black," June 26-July 12, and “Peach Pie Reunion,” July 30-Aug. 16.