Arts · February 27, 2025
New Musical About the Week Porter Falls Waited for Its First Train Gets a Staged Reading Saturday
“The Millrace Follies of 1911,” by an alumna and a composition professor, will be read with scripts in hand, a piano and a borrowed steam whistle.
A new musical comedy about Porter Falls in the summer of 1911 will have its first public reading on Saturday, March 1, at 7 p.m. in the studio theatre of the Applied Arts Building. Admission is free, and seating is first come, first served.
The Millrace Follies of 1911 takes place in the week before the first passenger train is due at the town’s new brick depot, the building that now houses the Welcome Center. A spring flood washes out the trestle at Cedar Bluff. What follows involves a stationmaster who has never seen a train arrive, a lumber heiress who would like very much to leave on one, a Porter Manual Training School student who believes his class can rebuild the trestle, and a town band that knows exactly two songs.
The book and lyrics are by Dana Marchetti ’09, a Porter alumna who teaches high school drama. The music is by Peter Trombley, assistant professor of theory and composition. The score uses ragtime, marches, a barbershop quartet and one very sincere ballad sung to a steam whistle.
“I grew up hearing that the whole town turned out for that first train, and then I found the newspaper from the week before, and it was chaos. Nobody knew if it would come. That is a musical. That was always a musical.”
— Dana Marchetti ’09, book and lyrics
A staged reading is a show in an early form. Fourteen student and community actors will perform with scripts on music stands, Trombley will play piano, and the stage directions will be read aloud. The steam whistle is on loan from a Porter County railroad museum and has been tested once, briefly, outdoors.
After the reading, the writers will stay for a talkback. Audience members will get a one-page feedback form asking which songs they remember, where they got bored and whether the ending lands. Marchetti and Trombley plan to revise the script over the next year and hope it will reach a full production.
The reading is presented by the Department of Music & Theatre. The running time is about two hours with one intermission. Students who want to work on new plays can find related courses under theatre.
Contact: Office of University Communications, news@uwporterfalls.edu
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. This musical, its writers, the reading and the borrowed steam whistle are invented, and there is no real performance to attend.