A tale of daring and love: Litchfield Community Theatre prepares to stage "Robin Hood and the White Arrow"

Nelson has been in theater and music since he was very young. He started in high school, kept it up through college and made a career out of it.

“I’ve always been a musician,” Nelson said. “In fact, I was born here in Litchfield and had a lot of my early music training here with our now former mayor, Keith Johnson, who was my band director when I was young. I moved around a lot. I started here in Minnesota, moved to Colorado, and once I graduated college I left for California.”

He auditioned throughout California, which he said was rich with theater opportunities.

“Of course, if I had gone east I would have gone to New York,” he said. “So, I went to California and started getting casted in shows and performing all around Southern California in the Los Angeles area.”

That experienced helped Nelson build connections within the state’s theater community.

“Back when I was performing in California over 20 years ago I made a lot of connections,” Nelson said. “A lot of the directors that I worked with found out that I was a musician and that I had written music and was composing. One of the directors had this idea to musicalize the Robin Hood legends, which is how this whole show came about.”

“Robin Hood and the White Arrow” has been performed for 20 years and counting, thanks to the work of Nelson and Johnson. And while Nelson said he believes in consistent performances, he makes adjustments to the composition when the need arises.

“I tailor make (the music) to the performers that are there,” he said. “So it could be a key change, or it could be a lyric change that would fit a little bit better in this situation. So, I make minimal changes, but it helps keep things fresh. It also helps me make sure that everything works for the people we have.”

Beyond the script, the musical has a dedicated cast and behind-the-scenes support. Nelson asked for outside help for positions that he had trouble filling locally.

“I have a friend who’s a fellow employee of mine in California, who’s actually coming out to help work on the sets with three of their local carpenters here,” Nelson said. “So, he works with those carpenters and they create all the stuff. I also have Jen, who is helping me with the choreography this week, and two or so weeks ago I had another friend help me with the sword fighting scenes. We had the swords forged here so that was really exciting.”

Because his theater friends worked with Nelson on past productions of “Robin Hood and the White Arrow,” they were familiar with the steps of the production.

“We’ve worked together so quickly, and for this particular show, we’ve all staged it,” Nelson said. “So we all know it. And that makes it so much nicer for everyone because they get the benefit of their expertise basically. We have people who get to experience different ways of learning and different techniques and different people because of this outside expertise.”

The outside and local help for the musical have done wonders for the cast, but even the local actors had their own talents to bring.

“What I’m finding with everyone in theater in Minnesota, especially even more than Southern California, is they all read music so well. They’re all such good musicians. Teaching them the music has gone so fast, they all just learn so quickly. It has been really nice and I’ve enjoyed working with them a lot,” Nelson said.