To the Editor:

The Esperance Historical Society’s Hysterical Players wants to reach out to Altamont Enterprise readers.  In particular, we are looking for a leading man for our third production (contact info below).

Our first production was three years ago as part of Esperance’s bicentennial celebration. In honor of our ancestors, we rewrote a play they performed 80 years prior.

Characters’ names were changed to reflect the original actors. As a result, the play’s title changed from “Getting Ira Married” to “Getting Chet Married” — in 1938, Chet Benson played the title role. 

We succeeded in our goal of bringing together folks of all walks of life to laugh and reminisce. After the final performance, someone joked that we should do another play the following year. I guess we don’t know how to take a joke; we immediately started work. 

We found a play from the same series — Denison’s Select Plays (a series of amateur plays). Our success emboldened us. We cut, we added, we “Esperancized.”

By our third year, the original Denison play was practically unrecognizable. The setting changed from a mansion on the Hudson to an Adirondack Lodge. The 1927 parody on the mystery genre, “The Girl Who Forgot,”  became “Second Anniversary.” This makes our script a spoof of a parody. 

Then COVID-19 stopped progress. Our script basically finished and our rustic set near completion, at best, “Second Anniversary” was going to become “Third Anniversary.” That was 2020. 

Today we have similar challenges but more hope and more resolve.

We are faced with the question, “How to do theater and follow COVID-19 guidelines?” It was decided to video-tape our show, aiming for a result looking similar to that of “All In The Family” but, unfortunately, without the live audience.

We are still hopeful a live performance can be scheduled. That issue will be looked into after completion of the video.

Our members range in experience from newbie to very experienced. What we have in common is we all have fun.

If you think you’d like to be part of our attempt of normalcy (whether it be acting or running lights) contact me, Willard Martin, by email at or by phone at 518-603-6399.

Willard Martin

Esperance