Published: January 06, 2006 02:28 pm            

Bit by acting bug: Octogenarian enjoys time with troupe

When Lura Mellot of Everett auditioned for a bit part with the Bedford County Players in 1990, she didn’t expect to land a major role in Neil Simon’s “Come Blow Your Horn.”

“I thought it would be fun,” Mellot said. “I hadn’t done it since high school dramatics club.

“I wondered if I could learn my lines. It went over well, and I got hooked again.”

Mellot, 83, has been with the acting troupe ever since, doing everything from pulling an upside-down cow in a wagon through a town to crawling under a bishop’s robe to tie some extra padding to his fanny.

“They’re such a nice bunch to work with,” Mellot said of her fellow actors.

Everyone else in Bedford County Players, as well as the audiences, enjoys Mellot’s stage presence.

“It’s hard to keep a straight face when she’s on stage,” said Deborah Bishop, a fellow actor and occasional director. “She’s always a joy. It’s the way she delivers her lines. She has a clip to her voice that makes it fun. She brings down the house.”

Bishop said the audience sometimes begins chuckling before Mellot can utter a line because they know what’s coming.

As a director, Bishop is glad Mellot always shows up for rehearsal and volunteers to do anything needed.

“If I need her to prompt, she’s down front in the dark with a flashlight and script,” Bishop said. “If I need a bit part, she volunteers to take it. She’s a real trouper.”

Mellot has performed in at least one play a season during her 16-year tenure with Bedford County Players.

Last season, Mellot appeared in “Don’t Tell Mother.” She was supposed to play the mother, but, because of the age difference with the actor who was playing her son, she became his grandmother.

“It worked out fine,” Mellot said. “It broke all records for attendance.”

Mellot said she will probably be remembered for her role in “Bless Me Father,” which she did in the early 1990s.

This is the role where Mellot crawls under a bishop’s robe on stage.

“I’m the housekeeper at the rectory, and the priest has hemorrhoids and can’t sit down,” Mellot explained. “I go under and fix a pillow around him.”

Because the actor playing the bishop kept walking, Mellot had to follow him on her hands and knees.

The players plan a repeat performance of “Bless Me Father” this year.

“I hope I get the (housekeeper) part, but it’s not guaranteed,” Mellot said.

When asked if she could still do such a physically demanding part, Mellot said she goes to a gym in Everett three times a week, where she participates in a Silver Sneakers program.

Another of Mellot’s memorable roles was that of a dim-witted milkmaid in “Fools.”

One of her favorite plays is “Our Town,” in which she played a nosy old neighbor and a dead body.

“It has so much emotionally,” Mellot said.

“There was a wedding scene where I cried, and singing at the church. My daughter said she’ll remember it until the day she dies.”

Mellot said that remembering her lines isn’t difficult because they are gone over so many times in rehearsal.

“I lie in bed and go over my lines,” Mellot said.

She also remembers her part in “Steel Magnolias” and sees herself in the title role if the players ever stage “Driving Miss Daisy.”

“Comedies are better than dramas,” Mellot said. “They draw the most audience, and everyone has fun.”

In addition to comedy, Bedford County Players do one mystery and one musical a year.

Don’t look for Mellot in any musicals because she admits she can’t sing.

When the troupe’s play-reading committee is going over possible plays to produce, members often remark, “There’s a Lura part,” Mellot

said.

“When they need an older person, they think of me,” Mellot said. “They have made my golden years golden. Movie stars acted until they were old – look how long Bette Davis did.”

Bedford County Players perform at Gardner Memorial Theater at Old Bedford Village and draws its audience members from Cambria and Blair counties.

In addition to her acting duties with Bedford County Players, Mellot played a Puritan woman this year in a Thanksgiving play at the Methodist church she attends in Clearville.

When the time comes that she has to give up driving, she’ll attend a church in Everett, she said.

Mellot was a mail carrier in Bedford County for 42 years, retiring in 2004 after her husband, Douglas, died.

“I went from Everett to Clearville to pick up the mail,” Mellot said. “After my husband retired, we made three trips a day. We delivered mail at the post office, then went to pick up mail in Clearville and Everett to get it to Johnstown.”

Mellot enjoys cooking and baking, doing crossword puzzles and watching the Pittsburgh Pirates and Pittsburgh Steelers – her favorite teams.

She has hunted and fished all her life and harvested a buck when she was 71.

“When we lived on the ridge, we had 120 acres of good deer country,” Mellot said.

The octogenarian has seen many actors come and go through the years at Bedford County Players, but she hopes to keep on acting as long as she has good health.



Ruth Rice can be reached at 532-5052 or rrice@tribdem.com

        

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