Luke Bradt: It’s gonna be fun! Let the show surprise you. I think what I like most about Popcorn Falls is that there is a real heart to it.

Yes, I play a bunch of zany characters, but what might surprise the audience is how there are some moments in the show that are completely straightforward and grounded. My goal is to get you to fall in love with these characters so you cheer their successes and mourn their failings.

Dan Olmstead: In a world that can seem so dark these days, Popcorn Falls is a charming piece of mostly light entertainment, but almost consistently surprising—a comedic tour-de-force for my partner-in-crime Luke Bradt. He plays by far the lion’s share of characters with a Chaplin-like grace, humor, and pathos. The play often swings back and forth between moments that are almost farcical, and others that are grounded, true and deeply felt—but without a doubt, Popcorn Falls is a comedy in every sense.

Henrik: How did you manage to learn over 20 different roles?

Luke: Practice. Muscle memory. Practice. Practice. Muscle memory. Practice. Practice. Muscle memory. Practice.
Perhaps surprisingly, the actual switching between characters vocally and physically isn’t the challenge. That’s the fun part! I could do that all day! I just get to let my imagination run wild.
​
The hard part?—all the minutiae that go along with it. Remembering if I put the cigarette holder in the front right pocket the last time I did the character, or if three scenes ago I moved the second cell phone to the front left shirt pocket during the scene change. Did I remember to preset the walkie-talkie in the jacket pocket for the last scene after I stashed it in the onstage bin during a change during the first scene?

It’s stressful stuff, and you have to trust your work, trust your prep, and trust that you have the chops to adapt if something goes wrong. And things will go wrong!

Dan: I’m not sure I’ve ever truly learned a role. If I’m being any good, at least to my mind and according to my own process—such as it is—I’ll be learning about my character throughout the entire process. If I didn’t approach both acting and directing from that angle, I’m afraid I’d bore not only myself, but very likely others, to tears.

Henrik: Which are your three favorite lines from this play?

Luke: I’ll try not to pick any lines that give anything away! Here we go:

“Hello.” . . . Simple line. But it’s delightful in context. It comes at a certain moment, and it marks the end of a particularly challenging sequence of character and prop shifts.

“Let dead dogs lie, Mr. Trundle. Let dead dogs lie!” . . . I have favorite characters. One of them is Floyd, the one-armed lumberyard owner, and I have a particularly fun time with him. While reading the script, I kept imagining the voice of the obscure character Monkey John from the Western series Lonesome Dove, played by Matthew Cowles. So Floyd is my best impersonation of that character, and I love doing it.

“One week. If there’s no play in exactly seven days, and let’s see . . . it’s 7:59 . . . I’ll even throw in a minute! You have until eight PM one week from tonight to put on your play, or I will see to it that you rot in jail.” . . . This is not an interesting line, but it was hard to memorize, and I am happy when it comes out easily.

Dan: Hmm. “One day we dreamers are going to realize that there are a lot more of us than there are of you.”

“I hit traffic, got stuck behind a parked car.”

“I’m so tired, I just want to sleep.” Actually that last one is probably reflective of the way I’m feeling right now, at the end of week 3.

Henrik: Tell us something about you as a person that only some of your best friends know about you.

Luke: I was stuck on this question, so I asked my fiancée, Nicole, and she says that I’m a terrible liar, so I’ll go with that. [He laughs] I can’t get away with anything!

I’m also a huge nerd. I have a whole room devoted to my hobbies. I regularly meet up with some friends to play Dungeons and Dragons. I’ve played it since fifth grade, and it’s always been an outlet for an excess of imagination.

Dan: My director, Ellie Mooney, is also my boss at home. She’s done an extraordinary job with Popcorn Falls, imbuing it with humor and poignancy. She and I met in 2010 during rehearsals for Amadeus at the Walnut Street Theatre. I played Salieri and she played Mozart’s wife Constanza. So Salieri finally wins! [he laughs] I had the extraordinary opportunity to direct her a few years back in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, here at the Independence Studio. She and the rest of the cast were beyond wonderful; and now with Popcorn Falls, she finally got her chance to get revenge and direct me!

I’m only kidding: of course, she and I have a unique relationship where we collaborate artistically on almost all our projects.

Henrik: Tell us something about you as an actor that only some of your closest colleagues know about you.

Luke: I’m petrified of missing an entrance. When I did Brigadoon in high school, I completely blew an entrance. It has haunted me ever since. I usually wait in the wings long before I’m supposed to enter, because I don’t want to space out and fail to hear my cue to get into place—sometimes, as far as two scenes in advance, if I won’t get in the way of anyone else trying to do their job.

Luckily in this show, I enter—and then I don’t exit. So I’m only nervous about that once!

Dan: Wow, there could be so many things. I am a devoted pet lover and I am fairly obsessed with my current puppy, Bisou. She is a magical little Cavapoo [a cross between a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and a Poodle] who, ironically perhaps, teaches me every day, in some small way, how to be a better human being.

Ellie has kidnapped her to Florida for the moment, so I am missing them both very much; and even though I am loving the theatrical romp that is Popcorn Falls, I’m very much looking forward to the death by a thousand licks that I’ll receive when we are reunited—to be clear, I’ll be receiving those from Bisou, not Ellie

​On a scholarship as a German exchange student at Bethel College, Kansas, I was given the lead role in The Sign of Jonah by Günter Rutenborn–putting God on trial in Berlin in 1945. Everything went well during rehearsals, but on opening night, faced by a packed auditorium, something I had never experienced before, I forgot all my lines for the first five minutes and went into a James Joycean stream-of-consciousness mode.

The drama teacher developed gray hair and made me stay up most of the night and rehearse non-stop till the curtain went up again the next evening. Unfortunately, by then, I was so exhausted and nervous that I lost all my lines again. While I learned to improvise in front of a whole hall of theatergoers, none of whom knew the script and quite a few of whom told me afterwards how much they enjoyed my performance—alas, I was never invited to perform in any play anywhere since.

​To this day, I don’t know why!
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Instead, I write plays in both English and German and became a theater reviewer and interviewer. In short, I have the greatest respect for actors, not only for their acting skills, but for their capacity to learn whole scripts by heart—as witnessed by muscle memory masters Luke Bradt and Dan Olmstead, acting over 20 different roles non-stop at the Walnut.

This interview was originally published by Phindie on March 9, 2020. 

To see the entire booklet, 33 pages, click the PDF file above. Below, a few excerpts. 

In the Fall of 1951 Bethel College welcomed the first participant in what has become a truly unique exchange program between Bethel College and the Bergische Universität-Gesamthochschule Wuppertal (BUGH). In the intervening fifty years 151 students have participated in this exchange program and thereby gained a better understanding of themselves and another culture, while becoming fluent in their new language. As a part of the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the Bethel/Wuppertal exchange program, this booklet containing words of welcome, brief history, personal essays, and photographs has been compiled. The historical segment, written by Erna Fast, a Bethel alumae, who was instrumental in establishing the exchange program, originally appeared in a booklet published for a 1994 Fall Fest Bethel/Wuppertal Exchange gathering. She has graciously offered it for inclusion in this booklet as well.

We are delighted to welcome alumni and friends of the Bethel College/Wuppertal Exchange program for the celebration of the 50 year anniversary of the program. It is only a small measure of the profound personal significance of the exchange program that so many have returned from near and far to join in observing this milestone. As I have visited with Wuppertal alumni on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean in the last six years, I have been impressed again and again with how these persons treasure the deep friendships, the changes in world views, the challenges to thinking and believing that arose from the experience of living and studying in Wuppertal or North Newton.

​This program has left its mark on hundreds of students. But it has left its mark on our college as well. International study-exchange programs were rare in 1951. That Bethel College and the then “Pädagogische Hochschule” created this program speaks to the firm conviction that serious encounter and exchange among persons of different cultures and nationalities is essential to real education. That conviction has continued and grown at Bethel College in a variety of formats and programs, but the Wuppertal program was and is the prototype. We celebrate this remarkable program, its inspiration, its history and the mark it has left on the scores of people who have through it immersed themselves in growth and learning.

Dr. Douglas Penner
​President of Bethel College

​Since my arrival at Bethel College in 1985, I have been associated with the Bethel/Wuppertal Exchange program. In reflecting on the 50thanniversary of this program, I am reminded how much such an exchange program can be compared to a person. Like an individual, the program has experienced and survived occasional hardships, developed a network of friends, taken its place in educating students and broadening their world view, matured and taken on its own personality. Within the educational framework of Bethel College, the Bethel/Wuppertal Exchange program has given participants the opportunity for total immersion in a foreign culture and for developing proficiency in a foreign language, invaluable experiences in a liberal arts education, especially for language majors. Such a long-standing and affordable exchange program, the envy of many other language departments, deserves both the recognition that comes with its 50th anniversary and the continued support of Bethel College and the Bergische Universität-Gesamthochschule Wuppertal.

​Over the years I have appreciated the opportunity to interact with the students from Germany, to meet older participants in Wuppertal and to see the students from both institutions develop during their year in Wuppertal or in North Newton. I cherish the friendships that I have made through this program. In more recent years a group of the German participants founded the Förderverein, an offically registered organization dedicated to supporting Bethel College in a variety of ways and currently chaired by Christiane Renger. Thank you to each of you who are members of the Förderverein for looking after the Bethel students studying in Wuppertal and making their experience in Germany even more beneficial. I would like to personally thank Professor Uwe Multhaup, my colleague in Wuppertal for his support and guidance of the program in Wuppertal, especially since he has handed over responsibility of the program to his colleague, Professor Bettina Hofmann. On behalf of the Language Department I welcome all participants of the program to this celebration and thank you for your personal contribution in giving this program life, direction, and character.

Dr. Merle Schlabaugh
Professor of German & Editor of this booklet to celebrate 50 years of the Wuppertal-Bethel exchange program.