Little Town on Big Indian

2013 · Arenzville Methodist Church, Arenzville, Illinois

Little Town on Big Indian is Ken Bradbury's affectionate, two-act readers'-theatre celebration of Arenzville, Illinois — the only place in the United States with that name — presented as a dinner theatre to kick off the village's 175th anniversary. Written and directed by Bradbury for his Lincoln Land Community College Traveling Theatre class, the show takes a whirlwind tour of the Cass County town first settled by Native peoples along Big Indian Creek, then traced through French fur traders, British rule, George Rogers Clark's frontier campaigns, and the founding work of Francis Arenz, down to the town of population 409 that calls itself home today.

But this was never meant to be a typical historical pageant. As Bradbury put it, "We include the more oddball occurrences in Arenzville's history." Alongside the milestones, the play tells of the little girl whose horse crashed through the Arenzville bridge, the day all Beardstown residents were banned from town, the ball games where each team hired its own umpires as bodyguards, the day the first television arrived and people lined up around the block for a glimpse, the one-legged man who mowed the cemetery, and the waitress who wielded her spatula to fend off the advances of local farmers. Woven throughout are first-person recollections gathered from residents — many no longer living — whose voices Bradbury treasured as "our town's treasures." The show closes the way the town does, around its famous Burgoo: the September kettle suppers, the camaraderie at 2 a.m., and the joy of seeing old friends return home.

The script was built from materials collected by two of Arenzville's most cherished citizens, Tade and Hester Lovekamp, from the work of web historian Molly Clark Daniel of Charleston, and from interviews Bradbury conducted for his book Souptown. "It's been more than theatre," Bradbury said. "My cast has been fascinated to learn the stories of their own area."

Production Notes

Dates: April 12, 13, and 14, 2013 — dinner at 6 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall, show at 7 p.m. in the sanctuary, two acts. Seating was limited to 100 per night, with tickets at $10 sold through the First National Bank of Arenzville.
Company: Lincoln Land Community College's Traveling Theatre class, with student actors drawn from the Triopia and Jacksonville communities. High-school members earned both high-school and college credit. The same troupe had toured 16 area elementary schools that year with Gimme a Hero.
Benefit: All proceeds were donated to Arenzville's Side Door Youth Center, a building with its own storied past — retail store, roller rink, grocery, antique mart, and now a gathering place for area youth.
Music: Composed by cast member Elisabeth Werries of Chapin, who also performed — the lone exception being the Burgoo song, whose melody Bradbury cheerfully admitted was "blatantly stolen" from the late Johnny Horton. The entire cast played instruments in the show, including guitar, autoharp, banjo, accordion (nicknamed Scarlett), ukulele, mouth harps, harmonicas, and even a washboard, several learned just for the occasion. A square-dance team from Triopia Elementary was also featured.
History and tribute: Research credit to Tade and Hester Lovekamp and Molly Clark Daniel. Gerald Beard supplied a display of Arenzville artifacts in the Fellowship Hall. The show served as the official kickoff for the town's 175th-birthday celebration, marked the following year in 2014. Cory Street filmed the production and Arenzville native Gary Manuel provided the production facilities for a DVD recording.