McALESTER MASONIC CENTER

SCENERY GETS A FACELIFT

By James Beaty
Senior Editor
 

Wendy Waszut-Barrett stood in the theater at the Masonic Center in McAlester on Friday as a huge scenic backdrop slowly lowered behind her.

An expert in restoring theatrical backdrops, Waszut-Barrett traveled to McAlester from her home in Minneapolis, Minn. to spend part of the summer restoring the backdrops at the Masonic Center.

She motioned toward the mammoth 80-by 120 foot backdrop as it lowered to the floor.

“This is the largest size in the Scottish Rite,” she said.

Waszut-Barrett has assembled a team of a few paid workers and some volunteers to work on what will be a long job this summer.

In all, there are 113 of the huge backdrops that need her attention. She plans to spend part of her summers working on the project over the next three-to-five years.

Don Jones, general secretary of the Masonic Center in McAlester, said Waszut-Barrett is considered the foremost expert in restoring theatrical backdrops in Scottish Rite Centers in the United States. She recently obtained a doctorate in the field.

The Center received a matching grant of $75,000 from the McCasland Foundation in Duncan for the project, Jones said.

“They told me they were very interested in historical preservation,” he said.

Many consider the historical backdrops in the Masonic Center in McAlester to be priceless.

“In 1953 they were approved for insurance at $175,000,” said Mark Halyard, the director of work at the center.

Those helping Waszut-Barrett with the project on Friday included Tammy Benson, Monte Hendrix, Michael Brakensiek, Jonathan Lalli, Bill Erkin, Johnny Allford and James Hendrix.

Together, they would lift the rolled-up canvas backdrops and then place them onto a series of tables set up adjacent to each other.

Waszut-Barrett is very familiar with the artist who originally painted the backdrops, Thomas Gibbs Moses. He was born in Liverpool, England in 1856 and died in 1932, she said.

“These were painted between 1928 and 1930,” she said, Moses died in 1932, just two years after finishing painting the backdrops in McAlester.

Moses viewed his work in McAlester as quite an achievement, according to Waszut-Barrett.

“He said the ones he painted in Oakland, California, were the prettiest and they were the biggest,” she said.

Waszut-Barrett said she started on the restoration project in McAlester on July 20 and plans to continue through Aug. 21.

She’s still looking for volunteers — but not to paint on the backdrops. She plans to do that herself.

Instead, help is needed on conducting repairs and such manual tasks as helping lift the huge rolled-up backdrops after they’re dropped from the ceiling.

A big part of the work is cleaning the backdrops.

“First, we drop them and then we clean them with Absorene, a wallpaper cleaner developed in 1891 — or, you can use bread dough,” Waszut-Barrett said.

The paint she uses in touching up the backdrops is a dry pigment mixed with “size” water, which is a glue mixed with water.

Waszut-Barrett became interested in restoring the scenic backdrops in Masonic centers because of her interest in the theater. She noted that scenery in most theatrical performances is done away with soon after the production is completed — while those in the Scottish Rite centers are permanent. “It’s a perfect little time capsule of the history of scene-painting in a theater,” she said.

The scope of the work done over the two-year project by the original artist on the 113 large backdrops continues to amaze many of those who view them, including the Masonic Center Building Superintendent Clemmie Peppers.

“Can you imagine painting like that, day after day for the whole day?” he asked.

“Tom Sawyer would have given up and went home.”

Contact James Beaty at jbeaty@mcalesternews.com.