IN THE NEWS

Helena play celebrates Jeannette Rankin and 100 years of women’s suffrage

via Independent Record

What did it take for women to win the right to vote?

And how did Montana come to play a major role in the women’s suffrage effort?

See history comes alive Friday and Saturday night at the world premiere of “Yellow Roses on the Hill,” a play by award-winning Virginia City playwright Allyson Adams.

Performances are 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 21, and Saturday, Feb. 22, at The Heath, 650 Logan St.

Adams describes “Yellow Roses on the Hill” as a political drama about the power triangle between first female Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, writer and activist Belle Fligelman and Jeannette’s Harvard-educated brother, Wellington Rankin, during the years 1914-1916.

"Yellow Roses on the Hill" celebrates Jeannette Rankin and 100 years of Women’s Suffrage

7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 21, and Saturday, Feb. 22

The Heath, 650 Logan St.

By donation at the door

459-9834 or visit theheathhelena.com

Howl! A Montana Love Story

Kevin Brustuen  |  Friday Nov. 1st, 2019 / Bozeman Magazine

In 1995, wolves were successfully reintroduced into the Yellowstone National Park region after an absence of 70 years. Before long, the wolves formed into several viable packs, expanding their ranges to create their own territories. Introducing wolves back into the Yellowstone ecosystem was not without controversy, however. The reintroduction of any species to an ecosystem has always been fraught with disagreement, but few, if any, cause as much controversy as the reintroduction of wolves to their former habitat.

Playwright Allyson Adams now brings her play Howl! A Montana Love Story, inspired by the true story of Wolf 39, to the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center (WMPAC) on November 15 and 16 for its world premiere. Wolf 39, a beautiful white female wolf, was an original member of the Druid wolf pack in the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone National Park in 1997. For a brief period, Wolf 39 was the alpha female in the Druid pack, but eventually her own daughter – Wolf 40—drove her from the pack and Wolf 39 went on a multi-year solo meander out of the park, traveling north of Red Lodge, through the Crazy Mountains to Livingston, down through the Absaroka Mountains, and up and down the Yellowstone River between Livingston and Gardiner.

Howl tells the story of an unlikely romance between a young woman who is fascinated with wolves and a rancher who strongly opposes the re-introduction of wolves to the Yellowstone ecosystem. Imagining the play occurring somewhere in the Paradise Valley, Howl explores the wolf reintroduction controversy through the lens of an unlikely romance between this rancher and the young woman who loves wolves. Despite the play being a romance, the story raises one’s awareness of the difficulties ranchers face as they try to make a living in a difficult—but beautiful— place to raise livestock, complicated with the reintroduction of a large predator species. But it also reveals the inexplicable love, yearning, and fascination we as humans often feel towards majestic wild animals, be it bears, bison, or wolves.

Daughter of actor Nick Adams tells the story of her new book

Interview by Piers Beagley

Elvis Presley had just exploded on the American scene and was filming his first movie 'Love Me Tender' when he introduced himself to Nick Adams on the backlot of 20th Century Fox. 

Nick was famous for writing articles about inside Hollywood and now the posthumous publication of Nick Adams raw, unedited manuscript details Nick Adams close friendship with Elvis Presley and the whirlwind eight days in Memphis during the famous singer’s Tupelo Homecoming the summer of 56. 

Nick Adams daughter Allyson Adams recently discovered this hidden manuscript and collected research and photos to go into the book.

A Valentine to the Old West

The path to “Howl! A Montana Love Story”

By JANA BOUNDS Mon, 11/04/2019 / Lone Peak Lookout

Virginia City’s very own playwright Allyson Adams has always been bold. Afterall, she was the mayor who arranged for 400 goats to come to the town to clean-up noxious weeds in lieu of using chemicals long before such a move was fashionable. The story hit international news. She was interviewed by India Times and MTV Canada – everyone humored by the fact that there were more goats in the town than people. 

So, she shook things up a bit when she was mayor, but she is also an artist – and not in some kitschy in-your-face way. She is an artist in the true sense – pushing boundaries without really meaning to and finding inspiration in sometimes surprising places. 

“I do think artists should drive a conversation, but I don’t think it is calculated or intentional. I think it just happens,” she said. 

On Nov. 15, “Howl! A Montana Love Story” about the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park will premiere at Warren Miller Performing Arts Center (WMPAC). It is a work over two decades in the making. 

“I think the best things come from accidents – things you never plan. I certainly never thought 22 years ago that I would still be working with this. It has had many incarnations. This was just a story I really wanted to tell and I was just not going to give up,” she said. “I am certainly grateful to WMPAC for giving my play a premiere.”

CONVERSATIONS WITH AUTHOR ALLYSON ADAMS ON ELVIS PRESLEY’S BROMANCE WITH ACTOR NICK ADAMS

Allyson Adams could hardly believe her eyes when she stumbled upon her father’s typewritten manuscript “Elvis Presley, Singer, Actor, Man” inside a white cardboard box she liked to call her “Daddy’s Box”, and had remained untouched for some 40 years.

“Daddy”, as she knew him is to us the American actor Nick Adams who starred in the TV series “The Rebel” as Johnny Yuma, and was well-known in Hollywood circles for hanging out with the likes of James Dean and even dated Dean’s “Rebel Without a Cause” co-star Natalie Wood for a time. However, famous of all his buddies was his best buddy, the one and only King himself – Elvis Presley.

Howl! A Montana Love Story

HOWL, A Montana Love Story by Allyson Adams

"Explore Big Sky” review by Bella Butler.

Big Sky. Twenty-five years have passed since the wolf’s reintroduction to Yellowstone National Park, and on Nov. 15 and 16 the contentious tale was revived at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center via a performance of “HOWL! A Montana Love Story,” a Big Sky Community Theater production.

The play, written by local playwright Allyson Adams and directed by Bozeman native Cara Wilder, recounted the tangle of social tension alive in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem after the controversial decision to bring back one of the ecosystem’s top predators, which had formerly been eradicated by way of hunting over seven decades beforehand. Although centered on big picture themes as a result of the infamous biocontrol frenzy, the story focused on the narrative of the mysterious and enigmatic wolf No. 39, one of the original female wolves from the Druid Peak Pack.  

Wolf No. 39 was portrayed through haunting dance sets by the play’s choreographer Jennifer Waters, and became the subject of dreams for Carly, a singer-songwriter and rancher’s wife played by Kali Armstrong, who also composed original music for the play. Niece of the famous astronaut, it’s clear greatness is in the family as she seamlessly danced between song and spoken story. 

Carly is enchanted by the animal in her dreams and empathizes with the wolves, despite the prospect of being ostracized in her rural community.

Feminists will honor first congresswoman at International Women’s Day event in Laguna Woods

By BROOKE BECHER/THE OC Register

The afternoon’s main event — “Yellow Roses on the Hill” — written by Allyson Adams is a fictionalized account of the true story of Jeanette Rankin, the first U.S. congresswoman.

Elected in 1916 — three years before women’s suffrage became national and four before the 19th amendment was ratified — the Montanan took office as an adamant pacifist, at all costs.

“She felt it was her destiny to end war,” Adams said about Rankin. “Murdering humans was no way to settle a political pursuit.”

Love, wolves and Big Sky’s community theater

By Michael Somerby/ Explorer Big Sky

BIG SKY – Playwright Allyson Adams, former mayor of nearby Virginia City, was baptized in show business, having been born in the cradle of American entertainment: Hollywood, Los Angeles, California.

Daughter of Nick Adams, an Oscar-nominated actor that had good friends in high places—Elvis Presley, for one—Adams was destined to find a career in the field, ultimately choosing theater as her medium.

‘Duck Ugly’: Montana playwright brings message of inclusion to Orphan Girl Theatre

Annie Pentilla/ Montana Standard

For the first time in several years, the Orphan Girl Children’s Theatre in Butte is presenting the work of a Montana playwright.

Allyson Adams of Virginia City is the face behind ‘Duck Ugly’ and says she wrote the play back in 2000 but revamped it for the Orphan Girl production, which kicks off Thursday at the Mother Lode Theatre and runs through Sunday.

Adams describes the play, based on Hans Christian Andersen’s classic tale “The Ugly Duckling,” as a “jukebox musical,” replete with classic pop tunes and two original songs written by Helena resident Judy Fjell.

‘The Rebel And The King’: Allyson Adams Finds Late Father’s Book About Elvis, Decides To Publish It

Huffington Post

Several years ago while in Montana, Allyson Adams finally mustered the courage to crack open the mental baggage she’d been toting around for 40 years.

It was, literally, stored in a box — a simple white cardboard filing container that she called “Daddy’s box,” the one packed with memorabilia about her Hollywood father, the man she barely knew, dead tragically in her early childhood.

“Believe it or not,” she writes in a new book dedicated to the big story that leapt out of that box that day and on to the page, she’d never opened it once in those 40 years “because I couldn’t deal with my father’s story, even though it haunted me.”

Underneath a stack of photographs of her father, actor Nick Adams, in his signature role as Johnny Yuma on the old TV series “The Rebel,” she found a yellow envelope with loose pages stuffed in it. On the front were the typewritten words “Elvis Presley, Singer, Actor, Man” along with her dad’s name in a corner.

She began reading. An “overwhelming charge of warm light” shot through her body. She had chills, her hands shook and her heart pounded. Tears streamed from her eyes.

Virginia City uses goats to chew weeds

ERIK PETERSON/Bozeman Daily Chronicle

VIRGINIA CITY — Bringing goats to Virginia City was one of Allyson Adams' first acts as the new mayor of this old gold mining town.

Nearly 200 of the animals are on Boot Hill, eating knapweed.

"We need more goats," Adams, who became mayor this spring, recently told some people at Virginia City's Metropolitan Market. "Next year, we'll probably need 1,000."

Goats were brought from Conrad to eat weeds that threaten Virginia City's native plants. Adams sees the animals as an alternative to spraying chemicals, but said chemical use along some roadways here will continue.

The mayor believes goats remind Virginia City's tourists and residents that Montana is an agricultural state, where animals serve a purpose.

"With all the development happening and people moving in, it's important to keep animals in front of people's eyes," she said.

Media Act seeks to bring film projects to Montana

By REAGAN COLYER/Madisonian News

Allyson Adams, a screenwriter and producer based in Virginia City, has written three award-winning screenplays, all of which take place in Montana. She’d like to keep production here too.

“It is my dream to shoot them here instead of Canada or New Mexico,” says Adams. “However, they both offer 25-35 percent film incentives. If Montana had a 25 percent cash back incentive then we could give our awesome state, economy, talent and crew a shot at bringing some of those productions here.”

Rankin's historic election marked in Missoula

KIM BRIGGEMAN/Missoulian

In a scene from an experimental stage production that Allyson Adams brings Saturday night to the Crystal Theater, Adams, as Rankin, is part of a telephone campaign on Election Day, Nov. 7, 1916.

“Good morning!” the greeting went. “Have you voted for Jeannette Rankin?”

“She gets a man on the phone and starts talking about her platform,” Adams related in an interview Monday. “She says, ‘And yes, women need equal wages for equal work performed. This is 1916, for heaven’s sake!’ ”

The line drew one of the biggest laughs at the first staging of Adams’ “Save the Country: How Belle Fligelman and Jeannette Rankin Changed the World” in Bozeman last week. 

Book gives in depth look at life as Elvis' good friend

(WMC-TV) - A new book gives a behind-the-scenes look at the friendship between Elvis and Nick Adams.

In the new release of "The Rebel and the King," Allyson Adams is sharing her father's story with fans. It is a behind-the-scenes look at the friendship and bond he shared with the King of Rock and Roll.

Allyson Adams said her father met Elvis at a popular Memphis recording studio.

"My father came to Fox Studio to audition for a part and he didn't get it, but as he was leaving he saw Elvis. He saw my dad and said, 'Hey Nick,'" she said.

The newly released book called "The Rebel & the King" consists of the original manuscript by Nick Adams about his friendship with Elvis. Allyson discovered it in an old box of memorabilia.

"When I opened the box I got a big surprise because I found this manuscript. I wanted to share it with Elvis fans," she said.

THEATER REVIEW : Females Under Siege : A debuting playwright has turned her experiences as a stripper into a raw drama.

By RAY LOYND/Los Angeles Times

Imagine a stripper at the Star Garden in North Hollywood or at any of the fleshpots along Sepulveda Boulevard quitting her night job to create a scorching, honest play about the effects of taking it off for the yahoos in a strip joint.

That’s exactly what debuting playwright Allyson Adams did. Adams, daughter of the late actor Nick Adams, used to bump and grind for a living in a mid-Gotham bar. But she was doing more than paying the rent. She was observing. And she has turned her experiences into a raw but searing drama about exploitation, double sexual standards and females under siege that is free of cliches and bawdily devoid of political correctness.

“Pink,” at the American Renegade Theatre, developed in its Foundary program for original works, is, contrary to published reports (including by the playwright herself), definitely about sex--its power, its fantasy, its use, abuse and, finally, its relationship to love.

Actor Nick Adams chronicled time spent with Elvis Presley  

By SUSAN KING/ LOS ANGELES TIMES

The Rebel & the King” is a sweetly naive account by the late actor Nick Adams about his friendship with a young Elvis Presley.

Adams wrote the manuscript in the late 1950s when he was a rising star in Hollywood. It was recently found in a box of the actor’s memorabilia by his daughter, playwright Allyson Adams.

She was just 7 when her father was found dead at 36 under mysterious circumstances at his home on Feb. 7, 1968, of a drug overdose. No weapons or pills were found around his body. But several personal items were missing including his journals, the typewriter James Dean had given him, tape recordings and a bronze replica of the hat he wore in his hit TV series “The Rebel.” Adams’ death certificate was changed three times from homicide to suicide to undetermined.

Allyson Adams shares a last glimpse of innocence

By Steve Gillespie / Managing Editor: The Meridian Star

Allyson Adams is sharing a great gift with the world.

The daughter of the late television and film star, Nick Adams, has published a book, "The Rebel & The King," that details her father's 1956 trip to Mississippi with his close friend Elvis Presley.

The posthumous publishing of Adams' account is in raw, unedited form, just the way Allyson found the 56-page typewritten manuscript among other treasures in a box of memorabilia related to her father.

"It literally shocked me," said Allyson, during a telephone interview last week. She said it was an extremely emotional moment for her to find something her father had written.

"Most of his writings, and other stuff, was stolen when he died, including the typewriter given to him by James Dean," she said.

 "The Rebel & The King" takes the reader on an eight-day whirlwind tour of Elvis Presley's old stomping grounds — from his home, Graceland, in Memphis, Tenn., to his hometown of Tupelo, for his homecoming performance at the 1956 Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show.

  Search for Love : Allyson Adams draws on her brief foray into stripping to explore such issues as exploitation and feminism in her first full-length play.

By JANICE ARKATOV/Los Angeles Times

Allyson Adams didn’t much enjoy her time as a stripper in New York a decade ago. But she did get a play out of it.

“It’s an arena for me to communicate the things I feel and experience, things I know,” said the actress, whose first full-length play, “Pink,” begins previews July 9 at the American Renegade Theatre as part of its Foundry series. “The play is not about sex. But it is a hot spot--this fertile ground where a woman takes off her clothes--to examine issues that are important to me.”

The Hollywood native, daughter of the late ‘60s actor Nick Adams, speaks with reticence of her brief foray into stripping.

“I regret nothing I’ve done,” Adams said flatly. “I did it because I was a dancer, and I needed the money fast. At first, it was fun, but that wears off very quickly--like about 15 minutes. Ultimately, it’s a game, a trade-off. It’s a deal you make with the men. But there really is something empowering about dancing. Even when I was doing it, I knew I would write about it someday. So I studied the world, observed it like an actress.”