Mines get sendup/blowup in Encampment

The Grand Encampment Opera Company will return to the stage this week with its annual Jamboree Melodrama performance of “Mine, All Mine or From Ghost Town to Kaboom Town.”

The drama, by Denise K. Buhr and produced in conjunction with Colorado-based Pioneer Drama Services, will be performed at the Grand Encampment Opera House at 7 p.m. June 14, and June 16-17. The performance will coincide with the Woodchopper’s Jamboree and Rodeo.

In western melodrama fashion, the heroine of the story, Trillby Sterling, faces off against a dishonest stranger who has come to town to hoodwink her into signing away the deed to her land. The land is loaded with silver, even though Sterling only wishes to graze her cattle. Other townsfolk try to help Sterling with not a lot of success.

The Melodrama, a performance art popularized in the West during the late Victorian period, is a musical play with highly sensational and emotionally-driven plots. The lack of subtlety in the plot is generally made up for with generous deployment of heightened emotion and even parody.

Long a tradition in the West, this year’s cast and crew of nearly 30 people will put on the production at the Opera House at 7 p.m. Admission is by donation at the door.