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Marta Hepler Drahos

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October 3, 2011

Marta Hepler Drahos: Wardrobe malfunction still recalled

By MARTA HEPLER DRAHOS mdrahos@record-eagle.com

I open the community theater season brochure and my heart does a little flutter.

The playbill includes the Tim Rice/Andrew Lloyd Webber hit musical, “Evita.”

It was 1987 when the show first hit the Traverse City stage. I was still recovering from my husband’s death a few years earlier and looking for something in which to lose myself.

I’d always sung but recently had begun lessons with an Interlochen Arts Academy voice instructor and joined another Academy voice instructor’s small northern Michigan opera company.

I’d also performed with Interlochen’s faculty-staff choir and in leading roles with two area community theaters. I was ready for a new challenge.

This production was to be staged at the then-unrestored City Opera House. It would be directed by the company’s New York-based founder, now a playwright, teacher, author and executive director for creative affairs of the Dramatists Guild of America.

It starred a talented local TV news reader and a talented local newspaper reporter with whom I would one day work at the Record-Eagle.

I got to perform the Eva Peron-is-dead scream, which I perfected over successive nights into such a piercing cry that it always caused a few members of the audience to gasp. I also was doublecast as a peasant and an aristocrat, roles that required completely different hair, makeup and costumes.

This presented a challenge when I had to exit the stage as one character and immediately re-enter as another. It meant I had to race behind the curtain, shedding clothes — and inhibitions — along the way.

Off came the elegant dress, heels, hat, gloves and fur, the bold lipstick and eyeshadow, the pins that held the French twist. On went the drab peasant dress and scuffed flats.

Compounding the quick change was the humidity, making my skin too moist for clothing to slide over.

Back then the opera house wasn’t air-conditioned and was stifling hot in summer. During rehearsal breaks the cast often swam at the Open Space, where a dancer once rescued a drowning dog. On show nights actors stepped out onto the alley between scenes to suck up cool(er) air.

Still, I managed to pull off my dual roles. Until one night when I came out as a peasant and happened to look down. I hadn’t had time to fasten the bodice of my dress, causing some in the audience to titter.

So when I open the community theater season brochure and my heart does a little flutter, it’s not just from excitement that “Evita” is on the playbill. It’s from humiliation, too.



Reach staff writer Marta Hepler Drahos at mdrahos@record-eagle.com.

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