The Colony.

The idea of being home in Montana during August includes a few things that I expect to come in contact with. One is unfortunately the smell of smoke as the state struggles to fight the forest fires, another is reuniting with my best friends in the world and the last is having the chance to experience "The Colony."

Since I was about 8 years old Missoula has been host of an annual writers workshop known as "The Colony" which acts as a testing ground for new work for playwrights across the country. My father stared the program with Greg Johnson when I was a child and I have been fortunate enough to not only watch some incredible playwrights (such as Pulitzer Prize winner Marsha Norman) but perform in my only stage reading ever. When I was a child I got to participate in the reading of "Trudy Blue" written by Ms. Norman alongside Andie McDowell (who lived in Missoula for a while) and spout of such classic lines like "I want pop tarts." While my part may have been small, the experience of "The Colony" became something that I looked forward to each year.

As well as having the chance to see my father work and interact with his peers, I have so many memories of bouncing around with all of the New York actors that got to come and do the readings. As my dancing took me to different corners of the country, the chances for me to see the play readings grew less and less with each year, until suddenly it had been about five years since I had attended one. This all changed when I came back into town a few days ago.

As I have grown, so has "The Colony," which now presents the works of NYU and Julliard graduates. It also includes performances from stage and screen actors from New York and LA interspersed with the local talent. That has always been part of the appeal to me; the chance to see a work from a seasoned playwright such as Marsha Norman one night and then come back the next night and see a reading of a Montanan's first play. My father has given up his leadership of the workshop but his colleague that I grew up with, Greg Johnson, is keeping it going strong. One of the readings in particular this year was really stunning.

I have always been more of a musical theater fan than a straight play fan but after seeing this work by Jessica Goldberg (a pupil of Marsha Norman) I feel as if my eyes have opened. On Saturday night of last week she presented the first ever reading of her new play titled "Ward 57." The subject of this brilliant piece of work deals with a writer from LA doing research on different victims of the war in Iraq in Ward 57 in DC. Along the way she falls for one of the men she interacts with and they battle the circumstances of the world around them in an effort to decide their future. It is all complicated by secondary characters and of course the continuing war.

What was so brilliant about it to me was how human she made all of these characters and how well she developed all of them in a mere hour and ten minutes. The struggle for me when creating something is finding a way to say more with less and Goldberg accomplished this so well. When the show ended I literally gasped at the beauty of it. She left me wanting more and that was a feeling I had not felt from theater in a while. She was lucky to have some great performers in it, including her husband Hamish Linklater (from the sitcom "The Old Adventures of New Christine") but the real beauty of the show was in how it was written. She made it political without being preachy, emotional without being saccharine, and theatrical while still being human. Not an easy task.

I feel privileged to have attended the first ever reading of this show and can't wait to see what comes of it. Missoula isn't known for it's art world but every once in a while something like this will come along that opens up Montana to a whole new level of creation. I wish that more people would have been able to attend it but I am sure it will be workshopped more in the future and maybe even have another life at "The Colony." I was so happy to be able to see a part of my childhood brought back into my life, even if just for a night.