Past Productions
Time Passes: A Poetry Salon
August 2, 2024: Dr. Ben Leubner, professor of English Literature at Montana State University, and a frequent actor with Montana InSite Theatre, presented a poetry salon. Leubner performed poetry from Elizabeth Bishop, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and Philip Larkin. “Things With Strings” a string quartet played four movements from Antonin Dvorak’s Quartet in F major (American Quartet), lending an interpretive harmony to this outdoor performance at Carrie Krauss’ backyard Amphitheater.
Animal Encounters:
Shakespeare on the Rise
June 28, 29, 30, 2024: In “Animal Encounters: Shakespeare on the Rise”, MIST explored different scenes derived from Shakespeare’s plays: The Winter’s Tale, King Lear, Macbeth, Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, Venus & Adonis, Timon of Athens, and Two Gentlemen of Verona. Written and developed by MIST’s co-founder, Gretchen Minton, the show was performed 18 times over three days.
This short video captures the highlights of this play.
Sonnets in the Snow, 4.0
February 17 and 18, 2024: fourteen sonneteers skied, walked, and snowshoed on the Blackmore-History Rock trails up Hyalite Canyon. They wore green sashes designating them as sonneteers eager to recite poetry, sing, play violin, or paint plein air art.
Sonneteers included Jess Benoit, Aaron Schuerr, Lauren Chavez, Keegan Grady, Ben Leubner, Mercy Simpson, Erik Pearson, Susan Miller, Kirk Branch, Carrie Krause, Luke Minton, Maeve Daley, and Atticus Cummings.
A Wider Prairie
September 8 and 9, 2023: we performed eight scenes from our show titled
A Wider Prairie as part of this year’s Tinworks Art installation, “The Invisible Prairie” in North Bozeman. For this production, MIST brought another tour of actors, musicians, and storytellers performing monologues, songs, and scenes from some well-known sources and some written specifically for this production.
Leaf-Taking: Shakespeare on the Rise
On June 23, 24, and 25, 2023 we observed the 400th anniversary of the publishing of Shakespeare’s First Folio with performances at Story Mansion in Bozeman and Tippet Rise Art Center in Fishtail.
In this production, we took some leaves out of Shakespeare’s Folio, presenting plays that came down to us because of this remarkable publication from four centuries ago. The featured scenes, monologues, songs, and art of “Leaf-Taking” brought Shakespeare’s words into dialogue with the remarkable landscape and artwork of Tippet Rise.
Sonnets in the Snow, 3.0
On December 27-28, 2022, we held our third Sonnets in the Snow, version 3.0. For two hours each day, poems and sonnets were performed on the Blackmore Trails up Hyalite Canyon between Christmas and New Years Day. Ten actors took to the trails, reciting their favorite sonnets for any one who asked for a sonnet.
Authors of today’s poetry included Luis Omar Salinas, Greg Keeler, Marc Beaudin, Claude McKay, Shakespeare, Rowan Williams, Patrick Kavanagh, Seamus Heaney, Katharine Coles, Elizabeth Bishop, Philip Larkin, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Frost, Aaron Schuerr, and Hedd Wyn.
For more information about the poets and the artists on this special day, the program is available on our “Programs” tab.
A Piece of Work: Shakespeare on the Rise
On August 20 & 21, 2022, we made our debut performance at Tippet Rise Art Center (Fishtail, MT), with a preview performance on August 19 at Bozeman’s Glen Lake Rotary Park. This walking production featured scenes, monologues, songs, and art that brought Shakespeare’s words into dialogue with the remarkable landscape and artwork of Tippet Rise.
A Piece of Work: Shakespeare on the Rise
Walking the Water Way
May 27-28, 2022, MIST presented Walking the Water Way in Story Mill Park. This event featured poetry, music, and art by people in our region who address the importance of water in their work and in our lives.
One of the pieces delivered for this show was written by Katharine Smyth. After our performances, Smyth published it in Vogue Magazine. You can read Smyth’s beautiful piece here.
A special website, “3 Days”, developed by Sophia Sisler was a companion piece to our Walking the Water Way performance. We encourage you to visit this site.
Walking the Waterway 2022
Sonnets in the Snow, 2.0
On January 22 and 23, 2022, MIST presented Sonnets in the Snow with eleven actors skiing, snowshoeing and simply hiking the mountain trails of the Blackmore loop trails up Hyalite Canyon. Sonneteers wore green sashes signifying themselves as Sonneteers. We had a great audience turnout on the two beautiful sunny days, joining the actors on the trails and hearing sonnets and poetry echoing across the mountain side.
Shakespeare for the Birds
On June 12 and 13, 2021, MIST presented Shakespeare for the Birds, a walking production through Story Mill Park in Bozeman. Actors, strategically placed along walking paths in the bird sanctuary, performed scenes and sang songs from Shakespeare related to birds. Audience members enjoyed the sounds and sights of birds while listening to 400-year-old thoughts from Shakespeare about these species.
Watch this nine minute video to hear Shakespeare talk about birds.
Sonnets in the Snow
In February 2021 we presented recitations of sonnets from the time of Shakespeare to the modern day.
Between 1:00 and 3:00, people of all ages and abilities skied, snowshoed, or walked the Hyalite Canyon trails finding performers along the way who delivered sonnets upon request. Check in stations at History Rock and Blackmore trailheads gave maps, directions, and hints about where to find the performers.
Watch this six-minute video to get a sense of the beauty and wonder of this great day.
The Waste Land
October 2020
The Waste Land is a modernist poem by T.S. Eliot. The poem gives a sweeping look at the wreckage of modern civilization, as its stanzas echo with the voices of the past and the present. Eliot mixed together classical mythology, Dante, Shakespeare, Wagner, The Upanishads, 19th-century French poetry, contemporary music, and much more in this attempt to understand how the fragments of the past could be used to prevent the ruin of the present. Prufrock is Eliot’s first major published poem, a work that is a study of an eloquent, but neurotic, prototype modern man.
Oguta Island
September 2020
Every year on 25 March, the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade offers the opportunity to honor and remember those who suffered and died at the hands of the brutal slavery system. Remembrance Day aims to raise awareness about the dangers of racism and prejudice today.
Oguta Island is a short 19 minute film based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. This adaptation examines the parallel exploitation of humans and natural resources in Nigeria.
Shakespeare’s Walking Story
June 2020
This ambulatory production featured a guided walk along Story Mill Park trails for small, socially distanced groups. At various places along the route actors were strategically placed where they performed speeches from Shakespeare’s plays around a theme of “prisons”. It was the perfect opportunity to immerse oneself in the beauty of nature and poetry while considering what both can teach us about dealing with difficult times.
Timon of Anaconda
September 2019
Timon of Anaconda is our adaptation of Shakespeare and Middleton’s Timon of Athens, set in Butte, Montana in the 1960s and ’70s. It tells the story of a mining mogul who loses everything and is abandoned by his friends. He then attempts to retreat to the wilderness, only to find that there is no place that does not have the mark of human activity. This 75-minute adaptation uses a 400-year-old text to explore our own culpability in environmental degradation, but also to consider what our next steps can be.
Interested in Participating
Please contact us if you have ideas for an artistic work that you would like to bring to a site-specific location in Montana.