Craig Daily Press

Centennial

Information about Craig's Centennial

Craig — The Black Mountain Theatre Group hopes a lot of people will audition for its next production. The play is about their ancestors, after all.

Black Mountain plans to present “Land of Northern Mystery” in April as part of the Craig Centennial Celebration.

The play, written by Craig resident Esther Campbell in 1958, is an oral history of the area split into three events, said Cindy Chotvacs, Black Mountain President and this play’s director.

It was originally staged by locals for Craig’s 50th anniversary.

The “telling” of the play needs to be redrafted, Chotvacs said.

“It is an oral history,” she said. “So much of it is a narrative, when (Campbell) wrote it, she was telling it instead of showing it.”

Audiences want to see the play’s characters interact, not listen to a seminar, the director said.

“You want your characters, the dialogue and the action to show the story,” Chotvacs said.

It will be interesting to see how the troupe pulls it off, because some of the characters are very different from people today.

“Some of these guys are old frontiersmen, and there are Native Americans and monks and other characters the costumes will be interesting for,” Chotvacs said.

Chotvacs thinks the nature of the play might draw more people to the auditions.

“We’re hoping we have a whole lot of people because there are a lot of characters,” Chotvacs said. “It’s kind of neat because a lot of people might have family involved in this story, or might recognize a family name.”

The first act tells the story of two Franciscan monks, Escalante and Dominguez, who were the first Europeans to tread in Moffat County.

The basis for the play’s second act, the Great Diamond Swindle of 1872, might be more familiar.

Two men living in Moffat County convinced investors from New York the area was rich with diamonds, specifically on Diamond Peak northwest of Craig, Chotvacs said.

“So they invested all this money and the two guys left,” she said.

It’s a fun piece of history, said Julie Dempster, Black Mountain member.

“It’s kind of this big local legend, whether Diamond Peak has diamonds or not,” she added.

The third act deals with Kit Carson, an explorer and frontiersman who, among other things, served in the Mexican American War, hunted Native Americans and became a serialized pulp fiction hero before settling in Colorado.

Black Mountain plans to hold auditions at 7 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday at the Craig Middle School Auditorium.

For more information, call Chotvacs at 824-6002 or visit www.blackmountaintheatre.org.

Collin Smith can be reached at 824-7031, ext. 209, or cesmith@craigdailypress