Blazing Guns at Roaring Gulch

14843 Resource 100516 12031 1 1067037157011 1250539897410 Controlled Pioneer Drama Service, founder, Shubert Fendrich! His life was theatre! Filled with educational plays, entertaining plays, school plays, and community theater plays!

Full length plays, full length musicals, one act plays... he wrote 'em all!

I have often been asked how I became publisher of a play publishing company. It's really rather strange to be involved in something so unique. Here is the story:It was not unusual in our family to go see a play every week. Growing up in Cody, Wyoming, it wasn't easy to find a musical or a play around the small town. However, there were always the local community theatre where they often put on children's plays and musicals. Of course, when it was seasonal, you could always go and watch their Christmas shows. Even when I was young, we would always go and watch the high school drama department perform everything from dramas to children's theatre plays. I always loved the comedies, though the dramas often meant a lot to me. I was even in one or two junior high school plays when we lived in Cody.  However, Dad felt that he wanted to do something special. He knew that there were many types of shows that would be great for all schools and community theatres. So he decided to start his own publishing company and ventured out to look for play scripts. He placed an ad somewhere which said: We are looking for plays for children... scripts for schools... theatre texts... playwrights! He wanted to become involved with theatre all over the United States. He wanted to become involved with the theatre education process in elementary schools to high schools! Don't forget community theater! He wanted the dramatic material to be moral, as well. Holiday plays would also be a strong part of the company, so he hoped. When he placed his ad, teachers started sending in copies of the school plays that they had written. These stage plays, though designed for amateur theatre, often did not have the quality that he was looking for. But many school scripts that had been done for school shows were excellent. He found high quality drama in the numerous small cast plays and large cast plays that were sent in. He began to select the best plays that would act as great drama aids for any drama class. Later, he created a competition to bring in contest plays. During our time in Cody, Dad even went back to college to receive a Master's Degree in drama. I learned about reader's theatre when I went up to Billings, Montana to see him perform. After that, Cody suddenly became to small for us.So, like improvisational actors, we took things as they came. Though we were like  amateur performers moving around without acting books, Dad had class. In fact, his own acting class when we moved to Laramie, Wyoming. Pioneer Drama Service, very small, was being run in Cody while we lived in Laramie. Dad was going back to college at the University of Wyoming for another degree in drama. While I was in Laramie, I enjoyed getting acting parts and acting roles in our drama club. I even was in children's theatre plays in a summer theatre camp at the University. These acting roles were not exactly challenging but they were fun! Children of all ages came to see me in Elves and the Shoemaker. (I did feel my acting was pretty good! It wasn't classic drama, but I received a lot of applause!) After Dad received a degree from the drama department at the University, we moved to Denver. The company was then moved to Denver. While the company began to grow, I was in the drama club at George Washington High School. The drama department at the school had a teacher who was one of the best drama directors around.Meanwhile, the playwriting contest kept on bringing in more and more drama for young audiences. It was obvious to Dad that teachers were looking for drama lessons to use drama in the classroom as a teaching tool. Drama teachers and their student actors wanted everything to help them in drama training, drama workshops, and student theatre. Though we did not have any books with monologues, we had plays that contained scenes that were excellent for school performances like an all-school play musical. The company began to purchase theatre books which we advertised in Dramatics Magzazine. Dramatists who were teaching theatre in classroom drama classes for classroom performances enjoyed them. But it even stimulated young actors into writing plays for young audiences and young performers.  Youth theatre meant a lot to Pioneer Drama Service. We would always go and watch classroom shows, especially when they used our  play resources. Personally, I loved watching the creative dramatics by these amateur performers. Dad would even help directing kids with dialogues.When Dad tragically died in 1989, I took over. The company was still growing and theatre education was always important to Debra (my wife) and me. We knew the importance of theatre arts. Whether a play was for a church, high school or professional theatre,  we wanted to make sure Pioneer Drama Service had playwrights writing a one act, full length, musical or a melodrama.So here we are now. I was talking to Dave Barton and Matt Bond who wrote the musical Tom Sawyer. They have been friends of our family for years. Dave looked at me and said, "Your Dad loved Shakespeare. He always used to say 'The play's the thing." And believe me, the play was his thing. It shows with Pioneer Drama Service's success story. Below are a number of his plays. 9 application/xml false Pioneer Drama Service Shubert Fendrich Blazing Guns at Roaring Gulch Our hero, Harry Heartstone, is in hot pursuit of the villain, Snipe Vermin. Here the story takes an unusual turn because the villain and hero are twin brothers (played by the same actor.) http://www.pioneerdrama.com/searchdetail.asp?pc=BLAZINGGUN Ducktails & Bobbysox Fifties rock 'n' roll star Curtis Jackson pays a surprise visit to the small town of Victor where he encounters a host of hilarious characters and madcap happenings. http://www.pioneerdrama.com/searchdetail.asp?pc=DUCKTAILSA Give My Regards to Boadway Dick Foster's Broadway show is opening, but he's having serious problems. An aspiring young actress walks on the stage and could be the one to save the show, if only they had the money to put it on. http://www.pioneerdrama.com/searchdetail.asp?pc=GIVEMYREGA Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; Media Center PC 4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Zune 3.0) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 $Admin 67.172.146.66 false true false false true 100516 blog blogsite/PioneerDrama/web