Profile Adele Bachman

Profile ADELE BACHMAN
From Rugged to Refined
By Molly Murfee
Photos Dusty Demerson

Everybody came. Seated on blankets outside the old school house, beneath a West Elk skyline, old timers and mid-timers convened and were transported to a world of witches and midwives, of fantasy and love and an escape from everyday life. In that first play that Crested Butte ever saw, Dark of the Moon, Adele Bachman played Mrs. Summey. She had never before had the opportunity to explore the theatre. When Tom Towler’s call for actors, musicians and set builders hit the town, Adele was finally able to explore a venue that had always interested her.

Adele was first on the scene with a circular saw to help construct the set. She cut the master for the poster, announcing the newly formed “Crested Butte Mountain Players.” It was 1972. The following fall, The Crested Butte Mountain Theatre was officially formed and the history of the longest running community theatre in Colorado began.

The town allowed the new group to utilize the Old Town Hall for their productions, and Adele still remembers sanding the wainscoting, building the stage. They heated the old building with a coal burning stove, and proceeded to put on A Cry of Players, losing some of the old-timer audience in the process when a scandalous scene had one of the actresses reveal her naked bum with a tear away skirt.

“Oh, we did a lot of great plays,” Adele reminisces, with the starlight of live theatre gleaming in her eyes, “We’ve always attracted a lot of great, talented people.”

After her debut as an actress, Adele also turned her attention to creating the costumes for the Theatre. With eyes brimming she continues of the epic tales of the creating costumes for Marat Sade, a tale of the human struggle and revolution. They were simple because of the mental institution hospital gowns, elaborate because of the post French Revolution garb of silks and long stockings. She won a Marmot for costumes in the deceitful The Children’s Hour, she notes wide eyed with a modest grin, and for costumes she designed in tandem with Kate Seeley in a Shakespearean production.

Once she dove in, she did so whole-heartedly. In her later years in the Theatre, Adele played the psychiatrist in Whose Life is it Anyway, and the 83-year old woman in Shadow Box (where she received a compliment that her portrayal of the blind woman was so believable as to convince the audience she really was blind). In Agnes of God she was Mother Superior (where the play was praised as better than the movie by one fan), the Godmother in Tony and Tina’s Wedding, the oldest sister in Dancing at Lughnasa. Through the Theatre Adele was allowed to escape, disappear into her character and leave home and work behind.

She reminisces over Cabaret, a dramatic 16-foot fall in one play that created a wave of gasps and exclamations from the audience, more recent productions such as Into the Woods, the Shakespearean plays such as The Tempest. She’s seen Crested Butte’s children grow up in the theatre and go on to create theatre careers.

Adele began her own Crested Butte career when she moved in 1966 to join her (then) husband, Don, who was working on the volunteer ski patrol at the time. Born and raised in Wiley, straight east on Highway 50 into the plains of Colorado, Adele then attended Colorado State University where she dabbled in math and sciences until finally switching to her true passion – art.

Since she was a young girl, Adele had drawn, painted and sketched. In Crested Butte she worked to expand her talents with classes in stain glass and life drawing (again causing a town scandal with all of the naked people). Not surprisingly, then, Adele helped form the Crested Butte Society for the Arts and the first Arts Festival.

“It wasn’t juried, it was a bunch of teepees, hippies and naked babies,” she smiles reflecting, “There was always good music. Townes Van Zandt came for years.”

When Don Bachman acquired Tony’s Tavern, Adele helped out, selling 15 cent draft beers to the likes of Paul Panion and Fritz Kochevar. In the current Mountain Spirits building she began Rags and Old Iron, selling hand crafted goods from her own talent and that of her friends. She created leather clothing out of skins – a buffalo cape carefully lined, deerskin pants, cowhide vests. In the Company Store she designed and made wedding dresses. But her favorite trade was a pair of “really brief” hip huggers for which she received a signed sand cast Concho belt.

”I figure she can’t fit into the hip huggers anymore, but I still have the Concho belt,” she laughs, “so I’m very happy with the trade.”

Always multi talented, and with a penchant for self sufficiency, Adele has become a Jane-Of-All-Trades. She learned some skills in her 4H experience as a child. She grew up hunting and fishing with her father (until he cut her off at young ladyhood figuring ladies should go to church, not the woods). She outshot her cousins until they refused to take her hunting as well. Now, venturing out with her long time companion Jeff Brekke, the pair hunts antelope, elk, deer, grouse, dove pheasant, quail and fish. “Everything,” Adele comments proudly but without too much boast.

The circular saw that came in so handy with the theatre helped her build and repair things around her home on the hill. She soldered plumbing pipes, helped to update the electricity. Accessible in winter only by snowshoe, Adele and her daughter Genevieve huff up the hill – to work, to buy groceries, to return to their warm haven.

Adele has seen rifts in the community between old timers and newcomers, then joining as the community came together to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the incorporation of the town (where she helped design the commemorative coin) and everybody brought a potluck dish. She served time as the Town’s Clerk during the “Year of Un,” where in the midst of -40° temperatures the water pipes froze and she joined the community to rebuild a pipeline.

Now Adele stands in the postmaster position in undoubtedly the busiest and most social business in town. Postmistress? No. Flashing her independence she declares, she is nobody’s mistress. The strong arms that can raise the haunch of an elk, help heft 600 packages a day during the holiday season.

Matter-of-fact but with a twinkle of mischievousness in her eye, Adele Bachman is both rugged and refined, a self-proclaimed tomboy who has also helped to raise the arts in Crested Butte. Some in Crested Butte pursued the self sufficient lifestyle, carving a living from the mountains and their bounty. Others targeted creating a community bursting with arts and culture and formed the compelling festivals and non-profits that exist to this day. But Adele, skill saw, shotgun, sewing needle and script in hand – did it all.

Celebrate the longest running community theatre in Colorado at Crested Butte Mountain Theatre’s Marmot Awards this Friday, January 9th at 7 p.m. Contact 349-0366 or mttheatre@crestedbutte.net for more information.

Molly Murfee is a full-time freelance writer with over 400 locally and nationally published articles. Her newest project is a novel of place, entitled “I Go to the Mountains to Pray”, exploring the persistent passion and fierce tenacity of mountain people living in the rhythms of their wild home. You can see a sample of her poetry on display now at the Alpenglow Gallery at Mountaineer Square. She encourages your correspondence at mmurfee.aei@usa.net.