Winter Drama “The Salt Year” Opens Thursday on a Stage Covered in Road Salt

The theatre program’s winter production, The Salt Year, opens Thursday, February 19, in the black-box studio. It runs February 19–22 and February 26–28. The play was written in 1981 by the Wesconsin playwright Agnes Thorsrud and follows one family through the winter of 1936 in a northern iron-mining town, after the mine closes in November and the snow does not stop until April.

The play is rarely produced, partly because Thorsrud’s stage directions ask for the floor to be “white and treacherous the whole evening.” Porter’s production does that with about 900 pounds of rock salt on loan from the city of Porter Falls Public Works yard, raked over a sealed floor and repacked between performances. It goes back to the city in March to be spread on Main Street.

“Snow on stage is usually paper or foam, and audiences forgive it. Salt crunches, it catches the light, it gets in the actors’ shoes, and by the second act it is everywhere. That is exactly what the play is about.”

— Isaac Haddad, professor of acting and directing and the production’s director

The cast of nine includes students majoring in nursing, mechanical engineering, game design and business as well as theatre minors. Auditions were open to any major, as they are for every production. The set, lighting and sound were designed by students in the department’s production courses. The scenic design team spent part of January testing which grade of salt was least slippery under stage lights. The answer was the coarse kind, after two rehearsals with the fine kind.

Details:

• Performances: Thursday–Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.
• Tickets: $12 general, $8 seniors and non-Porter students, free for current Porter students with a Porter Card
• Running time: about 2 hours 10 minutes with one intermission
• Content note: the play includes depictions of poverty, a death in the family and a scene of a man walking out into a blizzard
• Accessibility: the Sunday, February 22 matinee is ASL-interpreted; the black box seats 120 and has level wheelchair seating in the front row

Tickets are available through the box office. Students who want to get involved in future productions can look at the theatre minor, the theatre course list or the Department of Music & Theatre.

Contact: Office of University Communications, news@uwporterfalls.edu