Bruce Hall brings new plays and acting classes to Helena

Bruce Hall has brought Broadway polish back to Helena with a project that treats theater as both performance and training. The longtime Montana artist is using WordsMatter Helena and local acting classes to build a deeper bench of writers, performers and directors for Lewis and Clark County, not just mount a single show.

Hall’s current production, Five Easy Pieces: An Evening of New Plays, opened June 17 and continues June 18 at 7:30 p.m. at The HAT, the Helena Avenue Theatre at 1319 Helena Avenue. The program features five ten-minute one-act plays titled Judgment Day, Not My Child, Rapture Insurance, The Running Shoe and The Day Broke Bright and Cheer. The writers are WordsMatter playwrights Susan Gunn, Sandy Kintner and Hall.

The project fits Hall’s larger Montana arc. He grew up in Great Falls, started writing plays at 18, studied at the University of Montana and later earned an MFA in acting from Yale. His career included work on Broadway, a decade as artistic director with the Virginia City Players, founding the Brewery Follies and reopening the Opera House in Philipsburg. Now he is turning that experience back toward Helena, where the emphasis is on mentorship and skill-building as much as on performance.

That matters in a city where theater depends on a small but active network of venues, volunteers and teaching programs. WordsMatter Helena describes its mission as empowering voices from all backgrounds through storytelling. The Montana Playwrights Network says it works to bring together professional organizations, playwrights, storytellers, writers and educators to strengthen communication and literary and performing arts skills. Volunteer Helena says the Helena Avenue Theatre and Montana Playwrights Network provide local theater shows, conferences, classes and events for the Helena and Lewis and Clark County community.

For Helena’s actors and students, Hall’s classes and staged readings can serve as a bridge to more advanced work. The production uses local performers, and Hall has said he wants actors to discover capabilities they may not have realized they had. That kind of training can help fill a common gap in small theater scenes, where talent often outpaces access to sustained instruction, directing experience and repeated chances to perform new work.

Hall’s resume gives the effort extra weight. Independent theater listings describe him as a writer, composer and director for Broadway, Off-Broadway and regional theaters, including Montana Rep. They also identify him as the former artistic director of the Virginia City Players and the founder of the Brewery Follies. The Virginia City Players still present melodrama and vaudeville in the Virginia City Opera House, and the University of Montana Western Theatre Program took over the building for the 2025 summer season under an agreement with the Montana Heritage Commission.

For Helena, Hall’s return is less about nostalgia than capacity. Five Easy Pieces gives audiences new work to see, gives students and amateur performers a stage, and helps local theater groups keep building toward stronger productions from within Montana itself.