Like the main character in "The Music Man," Oregon Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Bill Rauch traveled the country, bringing the performing arts to small towns.

But while traveling salesman and con artist Harold Hill promises parents that he will start a children's band, then plans on skipping town with the money they give him for instruments and uniforms, Rauch and his friends followed through on their promises to help everyday people from Oregon to Maine stage plays.

Even if that meant sleeping in a defunct fast food restaurant, showering in high school locker rooms or building an outhouse.

"Hopefully, we weren't con artists," Rauch said with his characteristic big smile. "We did what we said we would do. In terms of convincing people to do what they never thought they would be doing, it had a 'Music Man' aspect. It's amazing to see how communities come to life from putting plays together."

OSF is bringing its own production of "The Music Man" to life this season with Rauch as director. The musical opened on Feb. 15 and runs through Nov. 1.

Rauch's love for "The Music Man" started early.

His family moved often because of his father's career in marketing. Rauch was again at a new school and got cast as the town delinquent Tommy Djilas in "The Music Man." His two sisters also had parts in the musical.

"As a newbie, I was told not a lot of people went to high school plays," he recalled.

With maps in hand, Rauch and fellow drama club members divided up the town and then went door-to-door, inviting residents to the musical. The play sold out.

"It was a completely magical event in my childhood," he said, adding that the story from the musical "embedded itself in my consciousness."

A few years later in college, he met Alison Carey, who is now heading an OSF program to commission plays based on United States history. Upon graduation, Rauch, Carey and their friends were discussing the troubling statistic that only 2 percent of Americans went to professional theater on a regular basis.

"We wanted to create a company that would reach the broadest section of the population as possible," Rauch said.

Cornerstone Theater Company was born in 1986, and the young friends spent the next five years traveling the country in a Ford van.

They visited Long Creek, a small town in eastern Oregon, where about 50 of its approximately 200 residents were involved in staging a play in a cattle auction barn. They installed a wood-burning stove in the unheated barn, put up a tent for a dressing room and built an outhouse for the audience.

Wherever they went, members of the traveling theater company asked to stay in "otherwise unoccupied places." In one town, they stayed in a high school, showering in the locker rooms and cooking in the home economics room. Carey spent time living in an abandoned fast food restaurant.

In a rural North Dakota town, she also learned to be a bartender.

"Alison tended bar so the bartender and his wife could rehearse in the play so they wouldn't lose any business," Rauch said.

In Texas, Cornerstone members who spoke Spanish attended a Mass and then invited Latino members of the community to take part in a play.

In a small Kansas town with only 225 people, 250 people greeted them upon their arrival.

"We had no shortage of auditioners," Rauch said.

Things were different when they went to an American Indian reservation in Nevada.

"I ate with tribal elders for a month before I could convince one to audition," Rauch said.

Wherever they went, Cornerstone members left behind a portion of box office revenues so that communities could do more plays. One theater in Maine got its start that way and is still going, almost 20 years later, he said.

In Port Gibson, Mississippi, Cornerstone members didn't know at first whether there had been any impact at all from their visit. Black and white auditioners were cast as members of the feuding Montague and Capulet families in a production of "Romeo and Juliet."

The mayor boycotted the play.

Yet for the closing performance, there was a waiting list of people trying to watch William Shakespeare's tragedy. Still, there didn't seem to be much impact.

"The community only did one biracial play after that. We felt we had failed," Rauch said.

Then came word that the Mississippi town had formed Port Gibson Main Street, a nonprofit corporation started in 1990 to help revitalize the downtown. The nonprofit received an honor for having a racially integrated board.

Rauch said a community member told him that was possible, in part, because of the town's experience with "Romeo and Juliet."

Even today, Port Gibson Main Street describes itself on its Web site as having "a diverse 21-member board of directors representing a broad cross-section of the community." The nonprofit says that two-thirds of its board members are African-American and one-third are Caucasian.

With that experience in how the performing arts can help transform communities, it's little wonder that Rauch is emphasizing that theme of community transformation in "The Music Man" at OSF.

Even as the villain Harold Hill schemes to get money from River City's unsuspecting parents, the town is gradually changing as its residents embrace music. Rauch is highlighting that change with costumes that morph from monochromatic black, white and gray to vibrant color.

He said community members who take on roles in the performing arts end up developing a profound level of trust in each other. Whether it's music or theater, they depend on one another to not look foolish in front of an audience.

"You have to trust and depend on them to pass you the next line or pass you the right prop," Rauch said. "It's an experience in building trust and communication that has affected the lives of individuals and communities."

Staff writer Vickie Aldous can be reached at 479-8199 or vlaldous@yahoo.com.