Author Description

“No Greater Love” presents the tragic and triumphant story about the 1917 Granite Mountain-Speculator Mine fire in Butte, Montana, the city’s miners and their families. This powerful event took the lives of some 168 miners. By recalling the horrific circumstances that occurred nearly a mile deep in Butte’s copper mines, the musical memorializes those who died or who were seriously injured. The piece celebrates remarkable heroes such as Manus Duggan, the young miner who rose up in the midst of suffocating smoke and complete darkness to lead 28 others to safety while sacrificing his own life. The impact of that event on the city was immeasurable, its aftermath indelibly stamped upon Butte’s citizens. An effective retelling of this sad story demands the bringing together of theater, music, dance, stage sets and costuming to recreate the underground chaos of the disaster and the miners’ and city’s response to those powerful forces. No Greater Love reveals some of the colorful characters that lived in the context of 1917 Butte. Miners, drinking and prostitution are juxtaposed with some of the wealthiest people in the world that afforded the creation of beautiful architecture and developed high culture while living with religious fervor in a community of immigrants. The rich and poor of Butte’s cosmopolitan citizenry were faced with an almost insurmountable catastrophe that resulted in an enormous, heritable contribution to the town’s own endowment of a collective strength of mind, undaunted courage of heart and extraordinary commitment to one another. The heat of the 1917 mine fire forged a remarkable collective character strong enough to stand up to natural events and any human-caused forces that pushed against the town’s will to exist and improve. When Butte rose up from the smoke and ashes of the mine fire, the city developed and signed a social contract with itself that states: “When we work together, we can recover and endure”. A theatrical retelling of such a catas