Since November, Bangor Community Theatre has been rehearsing a cast of more than 30 local actors in the Tony Award-winning musical “Guys and Dolls,” which plays this weekend at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono. Written by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows, with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, the New York story revolves around Nathan Detroit, his floating crap game and a bet he makes with a buddy about falling in love. The musical, featuring the hummable tunes “A Bushel and a Peck” and “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat,” was a Broadway hit in the early 1950s and again in 1992, and it was also made into a 1955 film starring Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra, who transformed “Luck Be a Lady” into one of his signature songs.

But nothing beats the community theater musical when it comes to fun. I recently met with members of the creative and producing team for “Guys and Dolls”: Theatre president Missy Babineau, director Doug Meswarb, vice president Barbara Grant, Maine Center for the Arts associate director Adele Adkins, and music director Lud Hallman. I asked: Why do they keep coming back to these elephant-sized shows? What drives them to do amateur productions? Why is the musical so important to community theater?

Their responses were quick and passionate. They do what they do because they love it. In addition to spending long hours rehearsing in cold halls, everyone around the table has a day job: Babineau is assistant vice president and a loan officer at Bangor Savings Bank, Meswarb is an inventory control specialist at Old Town Canoe, Grant is an office manager and chiropractic assistant, Adkins is second in command at the MCA and also first cellist for the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, and Hallman is a professor of music at the University of Maine.

They all said community theater is a long tradition in Bangor, one that they intend to pass on to the next generation and beyond. The following is an excerpt from our discussion.

Alicia Anstead: Why is it important to put this effort into community theater? The payback for professionals is a job and a paycheck. What do you get from community theater?

Doug Meswarb: A sense of accomplishment. So much of what we deem entertainment these days is a quick fix. There’s instant gratification and it’s over. Especially in a place on the edge of northern Maine where the broader community might never ever get the chance to see live theater and couldn’t necessarily afford professional theater, community theater brings the cost down but also gives people the impetus to go watch people in their community. Their Uncle Roger may be one of the people onstage, and they want to go watch.

Anstead: Why do people want to see Uncle Roger onstage? Is he more of a pull than a touring show from New York?

Meswarb: It’s a personal connection. People go expecting to make fun of Uncle Roger. And yet when they see him, chances are their respect for him goes up, not down. A bunch of the guys I work with at Old Town Canoe have never ever been to a live performance, and they are all going to come to the show this weekend. They are treating it as kind of a joke, but I think once they see it their respect will go up. And maybe I’ll get them to audition.

Adkins: As a performer playing in the Bangor Symphony, which is similar to community theater, cliche or not, it really feeds your soul. If I didn’t have that outlet with the Bangor Symphony, as much as I love what I do professionally, I couldn’t live here as a musician because that is something that people who perform, whether they sing or they act or play an instrument, need for nourishment.

Babineau: I think it’s pure passion that drives us because, obviously, it isn’t the money. It’s not about that. Bottom line is that it is a love of performing that keeps pushing you along.

Meswarb: This week is what we call hell week. Nobody’s getting any sleep. We’re all sick. We’re all cranky. We’re all tired of looking at each other. And we say: Why, why are we doing this? The answer always is: because we have to.

Hallman: It’s about our culture. It’s about a thing that will die if it isn’t kept alive. If you look back to 17th and 18th century Vienna, the string quartet is what people did for entertainment. They got together and played music. That huge knowledge base and that huge passion for the art allow people like Mozart and Schubert and maybe Frank Loesser to surface to the top. It takes a lot of activity at all levels to allow the culture to flourish. The arts are not a spectator sport. They don’t get into your blood unless you’ve done it yourself.

Anstead: Why do we keep coming back to the musical as entertainment in Bangor?

Hallman: It’s a part of our culture. It’s American.

Anstead: As a person who sings lieder and knows opera, do you, Lud, have to adjust your ear for musicals?

Hallman: This is the third time I’ve done “Guys and Dolls,” and it’s one I look forward to. There are some really wonderful musical moments (Hallman broke into song here:) “My time of day is the dark time” – it’s really very contemporary. It’s good art music.

Adkins: For classical people and classically trained people, it’s wrong to think the Broadway musical is not in its own way as special as classical music. Frank Loesser and Stephen Sondheim are musical geniuses in their art form, and that’s not any less than being a genius in opera.

Hallman: This has been our opera – the Broadway musical. I make no apologies for “Guys and Dolls.” It’s a much better story than many operas, and there are lots of poignant, touching lessons in the show. I also make no apologies for the music. It’s excellent music from the tinhorn fugue to “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat” – the showstopper. It’s good writing. And I bring to it every bit of the same seriousness and musical intensity as I would if I were doing – well, name your whatever.

Anstead: None of this would be happening if the producers didn’t say: Let’s do this. An organization like the Maine Center for the Arts doesn’t have to do this. Two years ago, you staged the original musical “Jacob’s Folly,” and it didn’t draw the crowds you had hoped for. Yet here you are again. Why?

Hallman: What a brave thing to have done that show, by the way. For Bangor Community Theatre to take very talented local people and give them the opportunity to try something new – if that isn’t done, where are the new pieces going to come from?

Babineau: It was a risk and it’s not something you can afford to do every show. But that’s why we have the warhorses like “Guys and Dolls.”

Hallman: There’s a reason they are warhorses.

Adkins: For the Maine Center for the Arts, our mission is to bring in the quality work we can from a national and international world, but also to keep your local community in touch with what’s happening in the world artistically. But there’s also a very big place for a partnership with Bangor Community Theatre. It’s so important to showcase local talent. Just because someone is a lawyer, doesn’t mean they weren’t in the chorus at Yale.

Anstead: We know family and friends will show up for shows starring their loved ones. But why should someone who knows no one in the show bring, say, a 10-year old?

Adkins: Every child is owed an experience with live theater, because he or she could be the next star. Every child deserves a hockey game, a basketball game, a ballet and orchestra and theater. Community theater is even more accessible. It can open a world of doors to a child.

Barbara Grant: I have a son that I started out really, really early in theater, and because he did theater he caught a lot of resistance from kids at school about it not being a cool thing to do. But he managed to overcome that and keep on going, and now he is actually bringing more people to the stage with him.

Adkins: One of my most vivid memories is of being 5-years old at Lincoln Center [in New York City] seeing the original “Man of La Mancha.” It was one of the most powerful experiences I will ever have.

Hallman: Bring the 10-year-old kid because she’ll probably have a ball. She’ll see other 10-year-old kids and younger on the stage. We have everything from kids to senior citizens in this show – it’s true community theater.

Grant: The people in this show are ages 6 to over 70. And they come from 17 communities.

Babineau: I am the mother of a 10-year old, and she’s already here every night. There’s some 10-year old who is going to be there in the audience, and it’s going to change their lives somehow and you never know who it’s going to be.

Meswarb: My mother exposed me to the arts very young. One year she dragged me off to a children’s Christmas concert and I didn’t want to go, but I was so overcome at what these kids could do that I asked my mom how could I be one of them and in a year I was. That experience shaped my professional life. Later, when I was an actor, a friend brought his niece to one of my performances and afterwards she said: I’ve been “magicked.” That’s what it’s all about.

Bangor Community Theatre will present “Guys and Dolls,” 8 p.m. Jan. 23 and 24, and 3 p.m. Jan. 25, at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono. For tickets, call 581-1755.