Organization

In early 2004, Russell Parker of ACE Theatre approached Seth Saunders, who owned a train depot eatery since 1995 called Puffabelly's, about staging a performance of The Great Denver Railroad Scam in his restaurant. Russell hailed from Midland, TX, which had a regular melodrama group which drew quite a few people and Seth was looking for a way to drive more people and tourism to Old Town Spring.

This melodrama was such a huge success, with its family friendly venue and with Puffabelly's Wild West Saloon feel, that the group decided to continue with the melodramas on an annual basis. The crowds steadily grew as word of mouth relayed how much fun the shows were and the melodramas were eventually expanded to twice a year, once in the Summer and Spring.

Today, Puffabelly's, is the anchor of Old Town Spring. Russell has retired from the play business to pursue his career, but the spirit of the original dream with ACE Theatre has been kept alive by Joe Cole and many others. He and his troupe of regulars have expanded over the years to provide a deep talent pool for the melodramas.

Unfortunately ACE Theatre has now closed their doors. In an effort to continue the fun and entertainment, Seth of Puffabellys has requested that the remaining troup be a permanent fixture of Puffabellys entertainment venue. Therefore, effective April 1, 2010 the troup will call themselves Old West Melodrama Productions and will begin providing melodrama, mystery dinner and other entertainment productions based at Puffabellys Resturant in Old Town Spring.

The evil Rook menaces the dim-witted Lavender Bouquet in Terror on the Tracks in Old Town Spring.

What Exactly IS Melodrama?

The theatrical genre of Melodrama utilizes theme-music to manipulate the spectator's emotions and to denote character types. The term combines "melody" (from the Greek "meloidía", meaning "song") and "drama" (Classical Greek: dráma; meaning "action").

While the use of music is common in modern film, in a melodrama these musical cues will be used to represent each character: Heroes are ultimately good and their entrance will be heralded by heroic-sounding trumpets and martial music; villains are unambiguously bad, and their entrance is greeted with dark-sounding, ominous chords.

Melodramas tend to be a clearly constructed world of connotations: a villain poses a threat, the hero escapes the threat (or rescues the heroine) and there is (generally) a happy ending. However, the term is also used in a broader sense to refer to a play, film, or other work in which emotion is exaggerated and plot and action are emphasized in comparison to the more character-driven emphasis within a drama. Melodramas can also be distinguished from tragedy by the fact that they are open to having a happy ending.

Many people think that melodrama is synonymous with bad acting, and that is not so (just ask William Shatner.) This is merely because so many actors who are too "over the top" appear to be melodramatic in what they are doing. True melodrama takes a great deal of comic timing and requires the ability to be able to think on your feet, because the audience throws the actors curve balls every night. You can rest assured that you'll have a fine evening's entertainment with our performances. For more detailed information visit the Melodrama wikipedia entry here.