The Play's the Thing

Classics and cowboys, Shakespeare and Seminoles, The Lost Colony and Love's Labors Lost. What do they have in common? Sometime this summer, they'll all be on stage and outdoors. Summer evenings are meant to be spent outside, and attending an outdoor drama is one of the best ways to enjoy them - the plays and the weather.

Throughout the country, over 100 places light up the summer nights for a season of dramatic performances. Many of them are a unique American art form - the Outdoor Historical Drama. These are usually based on significant events that happened in the local area. Full of music and dance, impressive special effects, and elaborate costumes, the outdoor dramas are staged in amphitheaters against scenic, natural backdrops.

Staging plays outdoors is nothing new. William Shakespeare's works premiered at the Globe Theatre in London, a ramshackle structure that looked a lot like a Tudor version of a football stadium, with the stage in the middle of the arena. The patrons were a lot like the crowds at the NFL playoffs, too, with the audience walking around the stalls during the show, eating, and yelling at the performers. Not exactly the sort of respect Will hoped for.

Across the Atlantic, the Puritans weren't big fans of Shakespeare or any other performances, unless the day-long sermons by Cotton Mather and the dramatics of the Salem Witch Trials count as entertainment. Most people in The New World were too busy setting up a new country to realize they didn't have the Colonial equivalent of cable TV. Amerindians had a strong tradition of storytelling and religious rites with dramatic overtones, but no real plays.

American outdoor drama started with The Lost Colony in Manteo, NC. First performed in 1937, it was part of a year-long celebration of the birth of the first English child in the New World, Virginia Dare, and the mysterious disappearance of the girl and her colony. It was an instant hit, and other communities began writing and staging dramatic retellings of their own histories.

The Institute of Outdoor Drama in Chapel Hill, NC lists 122 outdoor historical dramas, religious plays, and Shakespeare Festivals in 37 states. Most of the cast are local performers, who leave their day jobs as teachers, insurance agents, lawyers, or students to spend the night as Elizabethan royalty, Texas pioneers, Cherokee Indians, or Italian religious refugees. Performing is a matter of civic pride, since pay is low, and the cast must commit to as many as 14 weeks of rehearsals and performances.

While most of the performers neither seek nor achieve widespread fame, outdoor dramas serve as a 'break-in' stage for those who want to act professionally. The 'alumni list' of stars who started under the stars include Denzel Washington, Goldie Hawn, Jonathan Frakes, Kathleen Tuner, and Raquel Welch.

The tales told by the outdoor dramas are varied as the places they are performed. Texas! performed in Palo Duro Canyon, near Amarillo, is as big as the starlit Texas sky under which it's performed. Beacon on the Rock, is a musical celebration of America's diverse heritage, told through the eyes of the families who left their homes in Europe to emigrate to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Then there's From This Day Forward, a much more modest story of Italian religious refugees seeking a new home in the North Carolina foothills.

While that play is a historical drama with religious overtones, there are others which are non-Easter season passion plays. Many of them chronicle the life of Christ or portray other stories from the Bible. There are also several plays recounting events in the history of the Mormons.

And then there's the Bard. Unlike the old days at The Globe, audiences watching Shakespeare's plays today are infinitely more refined. So are the amphitheaters, which now have proper seating and observe the proper rules of theatrical decorum. Some performances - usually called something like Shakespeare in the Park - have 'festival seating,' which means lounging on a blanket on the grass while watching the play. At these festivals, picnics are appropriate before the show, but wicker baskets with paté and wine are more likely than buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken and beer.

The Institute of Outdoor Drama publishes a directory of all the outdoor dramas throughout the country. It also maintains a website listing all of the plays, performance dates, and other information by state and type of drama. The web address is www.unc.edu/depts/outdoor.

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