NEW GLARUS - The play depicting Swiss independence performed here annually has gotten a makeover.

Instead of a three-hour saga heavy with old English "thees" and "thous," the Wilhelm Tell Pageant has been shortened and its language updated.

"Last summer it just became perfectly obvious to me that something had to be done," said Matt Streiff who shares the part of Tell and saw a condensed version of the play while traveling last year in Interlaken, Switzerland.

"Our goal is to have it down to about two hours, which is what it was in Interlaken," he said of the play originally written by Freidrich Schiller in 1804 . "If they can do it there ... we've got to do it in New Glarus."

The play, now in its 72nd season, is performed in an amphitheater-like setting at the Tell Grounds - about 35 acres off of Highway W in New Glarus, 27 miles southwest of Madison. Organizers hope the abridged version will boost attendance, which has waned in the last decade, and engage audience members who might have avoided the show because of its length and daunting language.

"Back in the day, we used to have ... 1,000 or more (audience members) per performance," Streiff said. Newspaper clippings tell of weekend audiences totaling 5,000 in the 1940s and 70s, but now it's a fairly consistent 300 per performance in English. A German version of the show - now performed more as a tradition than for its audience draw - sees around 50 people.

"We tried to cut out sections that didn't really move the story along," said Matt Streiff, who along with his second cousin Petra Streiff, the play's director; and cast member Jim McNeill spent an estimated 10 to 15 hours analyzing passages scene by scene and line by line. "Everybody's part was cut a little bit."

The rewriting was done in a way that "will get the point across clearly without ... losing the sense of the characters," Petra Streiff said. "We have to make sure that the characters are still being true and expressed to people."

And while Petra Streiff agreed a shorter play was needed, she said the experience "was painful, actually."

"I have become very fond of the language ... very fond of many of the speeches," she said.

She said the new script requires performers to emphasize their acting even more to communicate the play's meaning since they have fewer words to do so.

The cast also started rehearsals two weeks early to allow more time to master new cues - and learn which lines are no longer part of the script.

"I'm positive at some point we're going to relapse" into the old script, joked McNeill, who plays Werner Stauffacher and said the new script may need some tweaking. "To me, this isn't a finished product yet."

A cast and crew of about 150 put on the annual pageant with a budget of about $10,000, which goes toward paying property taxes on the Tell Grounds, equipment, lighting, insurance, maintenance and college scholarships for a few of the younger cast.

Matt Streiff said after this season the organization plans to decide the future of the Tell production, including focusing on the English performances and possibly eliminating the German.

Matt Streiff said after this season, organizers will consider making other changes to the production, including possibly eliminating the German performance.

But for this summer, at least, the enthusiasm and dedication of cast and crew is going strong - including a couple members who have been in it since the beginning.

"As long as you have people who will volunteer, the play will continue," said Dean Streiff, 79, who has played a role in the performance in some capacity since its first year in 1938 when he played a choir boy.

In 1949 Dean Streiff debuted as Werni the hunter in the opening scene of the performance, a role he has continued to play for the last 60 years.

Kathleen Elmer, 82, also is an original member playing roles such as Bertha von Bruneck - an Austrian noble with Swiss sympathies - and Mrs. Tell.

But for the past 15 years "I've just been a peasant," she said, a role she knows so well that "I don't go anymore to rehearsal."

The performance also includes cameos from live cows, goats and horses and "takes a lot of effort from a lot people," Dean Streiff said.

Those include people like his wife Doris, 77, who although has never had a speaking part in the play can recite her husband's lines - even the ones no longer in the script - by heart. For decades she's mended costumes, made sure everyone was fed and has been a faithful audience member.

"I watch it every year and never get tired of it," she said.

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