Rattlesnake Kate

REVIVING A LEGEND: RATTLESNAKE KATE

IIt’s been three years since Colorado New Play Summit audiences got a sneak peek at Rattlesnake Kate, which back then wasn’t much more than a promising idea in the imagination of Neyla Pekarek. Simply put: “The Rattlesnake Kate world premiere musical that you will see today is dramatically diff erent from the concert version you may have seen in 2019,” DCPA Theatre

Company Artistic Director Chris Coleman said. There are at least a dozen new songs, Pekarek said, and only one that remains unchanged. The cast has been expanded from six actors to 14. There is now a fully developed script and a score that’s been expanded threefold. “It’s a completely diff erent show,” said Pekarek. The Aurora native, cellist and composer began developing the largely unknown story of Colorado frontierswoman Kate Slaughterback into a concept album back in 2015. The hook: Back in 1925, the self-reliant single mother came upon a migration of rattlesnakes near her farm in Hudson while on horseback with her 3-year-old adopted son. So, naturally, she proceeded to wipe out all 140 of them. “At fi rst she killed them with her rifl e, but she ran out of bullets,” Pekarek said. “So then she plucked a ‘No Hunting’ sign from the ground and just started bludgeoning those snakes to death.” Pekarek had recently left the Grammy-nominated band

The Lumineers and was pursuing her own artistic identity when she discovered a kindred spirit in Slaughterback. Born near Longmont in 1894, she was a nurse during World War II who held a variety of jobs, including taxidermist, midwife and bootlegger. She was divorced six times and made her way farming her own land. Pekarek wove Slaughterback’s biography into a 2018 concept album called Rattlesnake. Coleman then commissioned Pekarek, with the help of Brooklyn playwright Karen Hartman, to transform the album into a fully fl eshed stage musical. Hartman, playing big-time catch-up, came to the Summit with 40 pages of script in hand – “and we immediately threw 30 of them away,” she said with a laugh. But Coleman was so taken by the songs and the theatrical potential of this uniquely Colorado story that he immediately slated Rattlesnake Kate for a full production in January 2021. Then came COVID. “The delay gave us time to expand the story and integrate some of the deeper conversations that we are having about America right now,” Hartman said. The story is now framed as a group of contemporary storytellers who come in all shapes, genders, ages, colors and clothes, inviting us to gather around a campfi re to hear a story of the past. “The very fi rst line of the show is Neyla singing: ‘This is a tale about the West,’ ” Hartman said. And

even though Kate’s story took place 100 years ago, Pekarek added: “This is really the universal story of anyone who has been invisible.” To underscore that point: Kate is being played by three diff erent actors of diff ering ages and races. “After our last workshop, we talked a lot about diversifying the cast so that storytellers look like the Colorado that we see today,” Pekarek said.

One of those lock-opening creative conversations came when African American choreographer Dominique Kelley (DCPA Theatre Company’s Oklahoma!) read Hartman’s script and discovered this White woman from the early part of the 20th century who was fi ercely authentic in a way that rubbed up against the system of the day. “And when I fi nished reading it, I thought, ‘Well, that’s my story. I’m Kate,’ ” said Kelley. That’s when Coleman knew the story his team had to tell was larger than just one snake-killing loner. “The hope is that lots of people can see themselves in Kate,” he said. Slaughterback experienced a fl eeting taste of international celebrity when word of the snake attack started to spread in 1925. Hartman says that’s one thing Slaughterback and Pekarek have in common: “Both of them had this ‘shot-out-of-a-cannon’ experience with fame as a young person, and then they had to reinvent themselves,” said Hartman. After the glory comes the question: “What now?” The rattlesnake attack happened when Kate was just 32, and her life didn’t end there. She had 44 more years of “What now?” to go.

That’s why one of the writers’ biggest creative challenges was deciding how and when to stage the rattlesnake attack in the musical. The solution came from Broadway orchestra arranger Christopher Jahnke (Dear Evan Hansen), who suggested they tease the incident early in the musical, and revisit it later. Like a classic musical reprise. “The second time you see it, you see it in all its glory, and Kate is reliving the experience for a contemporary, younger person to hear and understand,” Hartman said. “When you see it again, you see it in the larger context of her entire life, and it is much more meaningful.” The overriding question that has driven Hartman and Pekarek: “Why now? Why do we need to see this story today?” Hartman said. She hopes they have produced “a powerful and previously untold story that a lot of people can relate to.” Pekarek counts herself among the many who have emerged from the quarantine wanting to approach their lives diff erently. “I am the kind of person who is a people-pleaser,” she said. “I really do not like to ruffl e feathers. It’s really hard for me to advocate for myself. And here’s Rattlesnake Kate, a woman who lived completely authentically to who she was all the time, regardless of cost or consequences. I know that’s more of who I want to be. “She was kind of a misfi t, and I think this is a story for misfi ts.”

“This is really the universal story of anyone who has been invisible.”

— NEYLA PEKAREK, COMPOSER

RATTLESNAKE KATE

FEB 4 – MAR 13, 2022 • MARVIN & JUDI WOLF THEATRE

COMING UP FROM BROADWAY

TOOTSIE

Get ready for the offi cial love letter to the theatre that will have you laughing out of your seat. Based on the 1982 fi lm, the Tony Award-winning Tootsie tells the story of an actor whose reputation for being diffi cult catches up to him, which prompts him to adopt a new identity as Dorothy Michaels to land the role of a lifetime on Broadway. What changes will fans of the fi lm notice on stage? In the fi lm, Michael Dorsey (as Dorothy Michaels) auditions for a role in a lead soap opera and the musical centers around a role on Broadway. Tootsie Book Writer Robert Horn shared with the Chicago Tribune during the pre-Broadway engagement, “by moving the show to Broadway, we get the chance both to pay tribute to the theater and make fun of it.” What else can audiences expect? Tootsie Composer David Yazbek (The Full Monty and The Band’s Visit) tells the Chicago Tribune to not expect to see recreations of the ‘80s music from the fi lm and to expect the exact opposite with a more upbeat and funky sound. See the hilarious comedy Tootsie at The Buell Theatre, Mar 29 – Apr 10, 2022.

The cast of the National Tour of Tootsie. Photo by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade.

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