Michelle Federer Butz, who produced and directed Our Towns Read ‘Our Town,’ had her own small town moment this week when the South Orange Village Council named her Villager of the Month of March for “outstanding artistic leadership” and “extraordinary commitment to strengthening our community” through the reading of Thornton Wilder’s play about small town life.
“This is the most Our Town thing,” Butz said at the Village Council meeting Monday night after receiving the honor. “It just fills me with so much joy.”
Butz, an elementary school teacher who has been an actor for 30 years, said she has been obsessed with the play for years and had read it several times. As she went about her daily life in South Orange and Maplewood, she said, she would come across people she thought would be perfect in the play.
“I knew that it could do something connective and something powerful here,” she said.
Michelle Federer Butz holding the the Villager of the Month proclamation with Mayor Sheena Collum, surrounded by family, friends and the South Orange Village Council. (Photo by Laura Griffin)
She assembled a diverse group of professional actors, including her husband Tony winning actor Norbert Leo Butz, and people from all parts of her everyday life, many of whom had never stepped onto a stage before, and some who attending the meeting, including Julie Pauly of the Able Baker and South Orange Librarian Keisha M. Miller.
“I wanted our towns, especially right now, to experience a feeling of connectedness,” Butz told the audience. “And by casting people from different pockets of our community, I hoped the audience and the cast would viscerally relate to the power of our loose daily tides that fill our lives with meaning.”
The proclamation, read by Mayor Sheena Collum, states that Butz was “moved by a deeply personal loss and inspired by the beauty found in everyday moments” and that Butz “created an experience that honored the ‘stuff of life’ that connects neighbors across generations.”
Butz filled in the story behind that part of the proclamation, saying that several years ago she was sitting in the backyard with her friend and neighbor Deb, watching their kids play, after a full day.
“And she said, ‘You know, I drive around from practice to practice, and rarely eat dinner before 8 p.m. and fall into bed exhausted, but I just know this is what I’m gonna miss in a few years when my kids are grown. This is what I’ll think of as the stuff of life, the sweetest time.’ I knew she was tapping into what Emily discovers in the Third Act when she goes back to relive her 12th birthday. My friend was realizing life while she lived it. That conversation stayed with me, and Deb died unexpectedly two years ago, I felt compelled to really what she was bless to know and to live.”
Butz partnered with the Achieve Foundation, and the production, read at Columbia High School, drew 400-500 people to the Columbia High School auditorium and raised $26,000 to support teacher grants and classroom enrichment.
“Her leadership reminds us that when art and community come together, they deepen connection, strengthen our schools,” Collum read from the proclamation, “and make SOMA a place where everyone belongs.”
Michelle Federer Butz talking about “Our Towns Read ‘Our Town’,” the reading of Thornton Wilder’s play by local residents when she received the honor of Villager of the Month. (Photo by Laura Griffin)
