Riverwalk Theatre debuts 'An Act of Madness: The Bath School Bombing'

“An Act of Madness: The Bath School Bombing”

Oct. 3, 8 p.m.

Watch live at Facebook.com/RiverwalkTheatre

“There are so many people who are absolutely unaware of this piece of history,” Jane Falion said. 

With her original play, “An Act of Madness: The Bath School Bombing,” Falion has been enlightening audiences about the 1927 attack on the Bath Consolidated School. The tragedy that took the lives of 38 children remains the United State’s deadliest school massacre.

At 8 p.m. Oct. 3, “Madness” will be performed live on Riverwalk Theatre’s Facebook page. The one-time Zoom production is free to watch. The presentation will eventually appear on Riverwalk’s YouTube site.

Falion is an award-winning director with over 30 years of experience.  She started in theater in her hometown of Huntington, New York. Falion has a theater degree from Taylor University in Indiana and a master’s degree in education from Michigan State University.  She taught theater, speech and English at Lansing’s Everett High School from 1993 to 2005.

Falion has written two other plays, “Murder at Locker 069” and “The Gales of November.”  She has directed more than 40 productions, including “The Rothschilds,” “Damn Yankees,” “Grease,” “Little Shop of Horrors” and “The Robber Bridegroom.” Falion is also a jewelry maker and artist who sells illustrated maps on her online Etsy store.

“I was incredibly nervous about this show,” Falion admitted. “This event still impacts Bath families, and I wanted to do it justice and get it absolutely right.”

A pair of bombings by Andrew Kehoe on a fateful day in May also took the lives of five adults and himself.  Kehoe also murdered his wife and blew up his Bath Township farm.  Unhappy with increased property taxes to pay for the new school, Kehoe placed explosives under the floors of both wings of the building. The south wing failed to detonate.

The north wing was destroyed by a blast that killed 36 children and two teachers; another child died months later.  Moments afterward, Kehoe drove his truck — loaded with metal debris piled on top of dynamite — to the site.  When he blew the truck up, Kehoe, the school superintendent, two other adults, and a child who escaped the initial blast, were killed.

In the mid-’90s, Falion read a copy of Grant Parker’s book about the massacre, “Mayday.” 

“I was captivated by the story, obsessed you might say, and I wanted to know more,” she said. 

Falion visited Bath and the Bath Museum. At a local pharmacy, she bought a copy of M. J. Ellsworth’s, “The Bath School Disaster.” Falion continued her research by visiting cemeteries where victims were buried and read the plaques and memorial marker in the park where the school once stood.  “It was a story that stayed with me for years,” she said.

The first version of “Madness” was drafted as a multiple for the Michigan Interscholastic Forensics Association’s 2003-2004 season. It went on to statewide competition; Falion was a forensics coach at Everett at the time.

A MIFA multiple is a bare-bones format with no costumes, only 3 to 8 actors and a 15-minute running time. The style is similar to the quick plays presented at Lansing’s Renegade Theatre Festival. In 2009, a reworked “Madness” was presented twice at Renegade in Old Town to sell-out crowds.

Falion said the confines of Zoom make the play perfect for the age of the pandemic.

“The text of the show remains almost the same,” Falion added. “But the rehearsal and performance is very different.”

Matt Ottinger supplies sound effects and Cody Skalmowski helps with tech concerns.  Michele Booher is the stage manager. “The technical staff report to her,” Falion said. “She keeps me sane.”

Some lines for the 30-minute Facebook presentation have been shortened or cut. There will be times actors will handle or split lines said in past shows by a larger cast. Falion said she misses the personal and physical connection with actors.

Falion invited actors that she previously worked with. “I scored an awesomely talented cast,” she said. Actors include Mark Bethea, Racheal Raymer, Brian Farnham, Ben Houlzhausen and Meghan and Adam Woolsey. Adam Woolsey won a City Pulse Pulsar Award for Best Actor in two musicals this past summer.

“They are very familiar with the unique delivery and performance style that’s needed here to move the story and heighten the drama,” Falion said. “It’s what drives he show.”