Two years ago, before agreeing to portray a famous Colorado prostitute in a play, Kathi Perry checked first with her husband.
“He works at the prison, and I didn’t want to embarrass him,” she explained.
“He laughed. He said, ‘This has been swept under the rug a long time. Laura Evens did a lot of good I heard about when I was growing up in Salida. People need to realize that.’ ”
On the other hand, small-town memories are long. Though Evens died more than 50 years ago, her Salida brothel was in business until 1950.
As a child, Billie Love, the actress who portrays Evens in the historical production “Madams of Central Colorado,” wasn’t allowed to walk down Front Street. Love’s father, a bricklayer, sometimes did brick work for Evens, who was among Salida’s most prosperous business owners. This never sat well with Love’s mother.
“I told Billie, ‘Your mother would roll over in her grave if she knew you were playing Laura Evens,’ ” Perry said.
“We still get people at our performances who say, ‘I remember when Laura Evens…’ Some of them don’t mind if you use their names, and some people will say, ‘Don’t use my name!'”
Both Perry and Love belong to the group of Buena Vista Heritage volunteers who wrote and edited a script about a half-dozen Colorado prostitutes and madams. The first performance, in 2007, was so successful that “Madams of Central Colorado” became an annual fundraiser for Buena Vista Heritage, a historical nonprofit organization. This year, there will be seven performances, including two at a Cripple Creek brothel turned museum.
Members of the show go to great lengths to reassure audiences that “Madams” is discreet — not unlike the promises that the original madams and prostitutes made to their publicity-shy clientele.
“We don’t use foul language,” Perry said, “and it’s in good taste and fun. It’s educational. This is the way women survived. Not everyone in those days could be a nanny or a teacher or a laundress.”
They start the show at 7 p.m., approximately the same time of evening that, back in the day, clients began showing up at Evens’ bordello and similar houses in Leadville; Cripple Creek; Butte, Mont.; and other Western towns.
Each actress steps forward with her monologue. Perry, as Buena Vista madam Cockeyed Liz Spurgen, opens the show with her story.
In turn, other members of the cast talk about different aspects of their illicit trade, including drugs, fines and the whores’ social hierarchy.
The five women who worked for madam Pearl DeVere’s high-end escort service in Cripple Creek looked down on Evens and her employees, who in turn disdained the “crib girls” working from the equivalent of individual storefronts.
And what went on in a whorehouse? In “Madams,” that’s addressed by the character called Laverne, one of Evens’ employees.
“You want to know what a night in a bordello was really like?” she asks the audience.
“I’m going to tell you, and I’ll tell you without offending anyone.”
Virtually every word of Laverne’s monologue is straight from an interview with Salida attorney Fred Mazzulla, who often represented Evens and her colleagues.
“Everything she says is straight out of that interview with Laverne before she died,” Perry said. She read the interview transcripts.
“She tells you about what happens from the minute you walk in the door, and you can see people sitting on the edge of their seats.”
