America's great outdoor dramas: tales and tunes about our nation's heritage ring out in exquisite settings produced by Mother Nature

Travel America, May-June, 2003 by Randy Mink

FROM THE TEXAS PANHANDLE to the highlands of West Virginia, shirtsleeve audiences gather on balmy summer evenings to see professional theater under the stars.

Set against backdrops like rocky canyons or wooded hillsides, the best outdoor dramas are epic plays on a grand scale, complete with music and dance, comedy and romance, pyrotechnics and battle scenes. Horses and other animals also get into the act.

Most plays, though practically destinations in themselves, are staged in tourist enclaves loaded with commercial and natural attractions (some conveniently situated on the very grounds of the amphitheaters). Backstage tours, dinner buffi2ts and pre-show entertainment may be part of the package.

Curiously. a good number of America's long-running outdoor dramas are clustered in the mid-South and lower Midwest, with quite a few in the Appalachian and Ozark mountains, where storytelling is a time-honored art. The outdoor drama industry began and blossomed in North Carolina.

The Institute of Outdoor Drama, the nation's only organization of its kind. is a public service agency in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It divides these open-air spectacles into three categories: 1) historical dramas: 2) religious dramas: and 3) Shakespeare festivals.

Best known are the 40-some historical plays that dramatize events at or near where they actually occurred, often spotlighting the triumphs and struggles of early pioneers, Native American heritage and famous people like Abraham Lincoln and Daniel Boone. This genre is one of two original dramatic forms created in America. the other being the Broadway musical.

Scott Parker. executive director of the Institute of Outdoor Drama, said the mood of the country since September 11 works in favor of increased attendance at historical dramas, adding that Americans' current preference for regional auto trips should help boost ticket sales as well.

"We anticipate attendance will, be strong this summer as families on vacation continue to show renewed interest in the nation's heritage, he said. "After all, these outdoor historical dramas bear witness to the great things we've accomplished as a people."

The larger-than-life quality of these plays appeals to all ages, even those who are not history buffs. Parents with fond memories of seeing the shows on family vacations make a point of sharing the same experiences with their own children.

More than 2.5 million persons annually attend outdoor dramas at 122 theaters around the country. But outdoor doesn't mean amateur. Many of the casts and crews employ seasoned professionals, some with Broadway credits and even Tony Awards. State-of-the-art sound and lighting systems enhance the, tales and tunes that ring out in the night air. Adult tickets generally cost $10 to, $20.

The magic of outdoor historical drama in America was born off North Carolina's coast with the 1937 premier of "The Lost Colony." Written by the late Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paul Green, the production was intended to run just one season, but it's still going strong.

Staged at the Waterside Theatre on Roanoke Island, at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, the play is based on the true story of the "lost colony" of men. women and children who in 1587 sailed from England to the New World. Alter establishing America's first English settlement, the 117 colonists, dispatched by Sir Walter Raleigh, disappeared from Roanoke Island with hardly a trace, leaving historians and archaeologists with a mystery that has never been solved.

To tell the story, Green, a North Carolinian who is considered the father of outdoor historical drama, envisioned a blend of music, dance, dialogue, lighting and special effects "all working together like the cooperative sections of a sym phony orchestrain moving the characterization and story of the piece." He called the new art form "symphonic drama."

Just a short walk from the Waterside Theatre are exhibits and a film at Fort Raleigh's visitor center, plus the horticultural splendor of Elizabethan Gardens. Roanoke Island Festival Park, on a tiny island across the bridge from historic downtown Manteo, has a museum, living history interpreters and a wooden sailing ship to climb aboard, all providing further context for the nighttime drama.

Described as a cross between Nantucket and Mayberry, 13-mile-long Roanoke Island is the year-round home of actor Andy Griffith, who began his career in "The Lost Colony." Other stars who have worked in outdoor historical dramas include Glenn Close, Kathleen Turner, Raquel Welch and Denzel Washington.

Green's "Trumpet in the Land," in New Philadelphia, Ohio, is a stirring saga about a Moravian missionary in the state's first. settlement and his conflicts with competing British and American forces. One scene depicts the brutal massacre of Christian Indians by American soldiers.

"Tecumseh!" is the story of the great Shawnee leader's fight to defend his sacred homelands in the kale 170Os, with dazzling battle sequences at the 1,800-seat Sugarloaf Mountain Amphitheatre in Chillicothe, Ohio. The audience is surrounded on three sides by eight stages that blend into the forested slopes.