[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 129 (Thursday, September 18, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Page S11721]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                     LITTLE COUNTRY THEATER TRIBUTE

 Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, 90 years ago students at a small 
school then known as the North Dakota Agricultural College created a 
drama facility called the Little Country Theater. This was surprising--
the school was, after all, largely focused on agricultural science and 
professional training for specialities like pharmacy and chemistry. But 
the college had one of those rare phenomena that every institution 
lusts after--a dynamic, driven professor who was both dreamer and doer.
  For the next four decades, Alfred Arvold was the guiding force of the 
Little Country Theater and the theater itself was the school's 
intellectual and artistic heart. Arvold and his students took an unused 
chapel and turned it into a home for drama; rebuilt an attic garret 
into a faux log cabin that became the college's premier meeting spot, 
one which hosted luminaries like Marian Anderson, Charles Laughton, 
Yehudi Menuhin, Ethel Barrymore, Eugene Ormandy, Charles Lindberg, Paul 
Robeson and Carl Sandburg; and produced a flurry of productions, many 
written by the students themselves.
  The focus of Arvold's philosophy was to bring theater to the public 
and he provided instructions and guidance for rural communities on how 
to produce plays at low cost and in the most modest of facilities, in 
cow pastures and haylofts, lit by lanterns and with planks for seating. 
Drama was to be used, he said, ``as a force in getting people together 
and acquainted. Instead of making the drama a luxury for the classes, 
its aim was to make it an instrument for the enlightenment and 
enjoyment of the masses.''
  To do that, the Little Country Theater toured regularly, sometimes 
traveling by special train and often producing sweeping outdoor epics--
one pageant mobilized 1,500 performers--that attracted huge crowds, 
including one of 30,000 spectators.
  After Arvold retired, Dr. Frederick Walsh and then Dr. Tal Russell 
took the reins and the theater moved in 1968 from its old quarters into 
a few facility built with significant help by friends of the school, 
Reuben and Hilda Askanase. By that time, the college had switched its 
name to North Dakota State University.
  Despite those changes, the legacy of the Little Country Theater 
continued. There was still the outreach. For a number of summers a 
troupe of actors known as the Prairie Stage toured the state, moving by 
semi-truck and performing in a circus-like tent. An outdoor drama, 
``Old Four Eyes,'' a saga of Teddy Roosevelt's adventures in the North 
Dakota Badlands, was written by Walsh and performed right in the 
Badlands. ``Trails West,'' the story of Custer's last days, was also 
performed at Fort Lincoln, his last post.
  During its 90 years, the Little Country Theater has produced 600 
plays, turned out a number of performers who went on to professional 
careers, entertained audiences, and, most critically of all, educated 
generations of students. It's a proud, vital, and continuing legacy 
that I'm proud to acknowledge and, more importantly, honor today in the 
Senate.

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