The Church Basement Ladies: Keeping it fresh

The "Church Basement Ladies" van was about an hour west of Fargo. Inside, four actors were running lines, the musical director was playing the boombox on song cues and the sound guy was at the wheel.

These are precious moments -- not as in, "that's so precious," but in the sense that the trip from Minneapolis to Bismarck, N.D., provided valuable rehearsal time for a show that was hustling to get ready for its world premiere.

"We moved a song reprise from one act to the other act right here in the van," said Greta Grosch, actor and writer of "Church Basement Ladies 4: A Mighty Fortress Is Our Basement." Grosch and three of her castmates were headed to Bismarck on this balmy day two weeks ago for a five-show preview run. The previous weekend, they had tested their legs in Grand Rapids, Minn. The show officially opened this weekend at the Plymouth Playhouse.

By now, the script has been frozen for a week, the sound and light cues are solid, and the songs are in order.

"We got a lot of good feedback in Grand Rapids," said director Curt Wollan, who had preceded his cast to Bismarck to do advance publicity. "We cut about 30 to 45 minutes and moved numbers from one act to the other. With intermission, it comes in at 2:12 right now."

You mean that at one point this show was nearly three hours?

"Oh, it was easily three hours," Wollan said.

"Janet says she loves this part," Grosch said of her co-star Janet Paone. "It feels kind of dangerous -- you know your lines well enough but you don't know if it's exactly right."

In Grand Rapids, the cast met for an hour before each performance to go over changes. A mistake from the previous night might have worked so well that it was kept in.

Bismarck would be different, as the actors would not be working with a full set. The Troupe America truck snapped an axle before it got out of the Twin Cities, and a second truck broke down, too. Finally, Wollan said, they went with a smaller vehicle and only brought part of the set. Stuff like that drives producers crazy. Grosch, on the other hand, was in a roomy, air-conditioned E85 van.

"The biggest problem we've had is finding the right fuel," she said.

Table work

"This is only valid until 6 p.m. today," Grosch announced. "We'll have new ones tomorrow and we can memorize on the car trip to Grand Rapids."

After a rough run-through the previous night, Wollan wanted cuts.

Music director Curley pushed the start button on his boombox, the cast sang and the sound of "Boogie Woogie Bulwark of a Basement" bounded off the walls of the small break room.

Grosch frequently stopped the action as the actors plowed through the new script.

"Curt wants to cut this, so let's cut it," she said. "Janet, are you OK with those cuts?"

"Change horse apple to cow pie at the top of that page," Grosch said matter-of-factly at one point.

Wollan wasn't in a strict trimming mood.

"Let's keep that," he said, as Grosch asked about a particular exchange. "That's 30 seconds of comedy."

The same recipe

"Church Basement Ladies" has struck a chord with audiences since the first version had its premiere in 2005. Writers Jim Stowell and Jessica Zuehlke wrote that script, inspired by the "Growing Up Lutheran" books by Janet Letnes Martin and Suzann Nelson. Grosch, Paone, Dorian Chalmers and Tara Borman play four women (Borman portrays a teen) who soldier through their duties in the basement of a rural Minnesota church. Tim Drake plays the fictional pastor.

It has not been without its troubles. There was the bus fire in Red Wing, the broken-down trucks and the usual hassles of keeping the cast available. And Wollan said from Bismarck that single-ticket sales had been soft leading up to the Plymouth opening for this fourth iteration. It was suggested that the franchise has become too familiar.

"Yeah, that could be," he said. "No matter what you say to people, they think they're seeing the same show."

The show, however, is no more the same than an LCA Lutheran was the same as an ALC Lutheran -- before the merger. As Grosch bounded down the highway, she said over the phone that audiences at Grand Rapids had liked the shorter scenes, the fresh energy and faster pace.

"People say it's the best," she said. "But they always say that."