With the leaves changing colors and the newly minted season of fall upon us, Theatre Siena is looking to spice up its own season with the upcoming production of Dead Man’s Shoes by local Michigan playwright Joseph Zettelmaier (who will be in attendance for the shows opening night performance for a special talkback).

Considering Siena Heights’ last production, a full-blown spectacular musical you may have heard of called The Addams Family, was a huge hit, Theatre Siena’s name comes with it’s own repertoire of top-notch theater, there are some, excuse the pun, big shoes to fill.

Dan Walker, who just took over as director of technical theater at Siena last year, is directing the original play about a grit-spitting outlaw named Injun Bill Picote (pronounced PEE-coat) on a bloodthirsty quest for vengeance. Based on a true story, the show spans across many great western landscapes including:  jailhouses, train-stops, hotels and churches.

Injun Bill (who in this production will be played by senior theater major Patrick Wallace) is desperately seeking justice for a fallen comrade, one of his only friends was killed, skinned, and turned into a pair of shoes, and he must find the crook who did such a horrible action. Bill is a quiet man that throws his blades first, and asks questions later. Yet, along for the ride, he finds a talkative, overly sensitive “fat man” in the form of Froggy (played by junior theater major J.J. Hoss) who knows a thing or two about cooking and playing the harmonica, the latter of which Bill finds remarkably soothing.  

The two make an unlikely pair, which is the stuff all cliche buddy-comedy movies are made of. But with a script so delicate, so rich and so darkly comedic, it’s a step into pulpy goodness. The show promises laughs, violence and cool trickery with shadow play in an intimate setting.

Dead Man’s Shoes will be performed in the Stubnitz Lab Theater, an appropriate location for a show of this caliber, as it will put the action right into the audience’s laps (the theater seats about 150 souls). For Walker, he relates the show to a Quentin Tarantino spaghetti western, where in one moment you’re laughing, and the next it’s complete chaos.

“When Joseph Zettelmaier wrote the show after coming across the story of the shoes, he wanted to write in a different genre from most modern drama,” Walker said of the play’s themes.  

Fellow theater majors Hadley Williams, Jordan Hayes-Devloo, Allyson Szymanski, Brittany Essen, Emily Hribar, Matthew Porter, Becca Nowak, Aaron Treadway and Nate Adams fill out the cast. With characters that range from a pair of troubadours who sing ballads between every scene about the events unfolding around us, to a one-eyed Irish barkeep that seems his best solution, as with anyone in the show, is to see who can fire their weapon first. All this leads up to a showdown that embodies the grittiness of all the wild west stories that came before and those that inspired it.

Dead Man’s Shoes first opened at Williamston Theatre (in Williamston, Mich.) in January 2014, with Walker working on the original run. Theatre Siena’s production will mark the first time a college has done this show, which Walker said has been the biggest challenge in the rehearsal process. Asking 18-23-year-olds to step into roles normally played by 30-45-year-olds is a drastic change; Walker said his cast has captured well.

“The students are doing a great job with difficult roles, frequently playing characters, from a genre that is really foreign to them,” he said.

Dead Man’s Shoes runs Nov. 3-5, with curtain times at 8 p.m. each evening. Tickets are $8 for general admission and $6 for students and seniors. There are also special reduced student tickets for purchase in the Dean for Students Office. To purchase tickets in advance, or other general inquiries contact the box-office at 264-7890. 

The show is recommended for mature audiences. It contains language and violence.