Flashbacks: Echoes of Past Issues
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Roanoke Island Historical ASsociation receives Hardee-Rives Dramatic Arts Award excerpted from presentation remarks by Bland Simpson
On August 18th, 1937, the 350th anniversary of Virginia Dare’s birth, down from Elizabeth City on a Coast Guard cruiser came President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Wearing a straw hat as he stepped off the boat onto a tumbledown gasoline dock in Manteo, FDR immediately greeted Lost Colony producer D. Bradford Fearing with this jaunty remark: “Well, Mister Fearing, we’re on time and things are clicking!” That evening, the President watched playwright Paul Green’s The Lost Colony from his open touring car, perched atop a specially built ramp, and, after the show, the performers crowded around the open car and received the accolades of FDR. By the end of that summer, forty-five thousand people had come to see Paul Green’s drama in its first season, and there was no doubt that the show would run beyond 1937. In continuing, the production – an educational and economic engine – has engendered a summertime village of both professional and amateur thespians who developed long-lasting relationships with people up and down the Outer Banks, and in the sound-country, coastal-plain towns. Its ties with the University in Chapel Hill were strong from the start – Green’s fellow Carolina Playmaker Sam Selden directed, Adeline McCall worked with Lamar Stringfield on vocal settings for the music, and Irene Rains costumed. It has been, and continues to be, a vaunted theatrical training and proving ground – with such Waterside Theatre veterans as Andy Griffith, Terrence Mann, and William Ivey Long – artists who have made the yearly productions at Fort Raleigh so stellar, and who have made major contributions to our national theatre well beyond the borders of Dare County. We may now observe that -- war, storms, fires notwithstanding -- things have been clicking for the Roanoke Island Historical Association’s Lost Colony for seventyfive years, and we note well that its audience over these seven and a half decades has surpassed four million. Significantly, Paul Green’s work has compelled us to explore more deeply the complex early relations between the Europeans and the Native Americans, an ongoing exploration of our common humanity and problematic history that the evolving stagings of The Lost Colony reflect. For untold thousands (and I am one), this powerful play offered us not only our first glimpse
courtesy of Roanoke Island Historical Association
North Carolina Literary and Historical Association Meeting Asheville, NC, 16 November 2012
of professional theatre in all its glory, but also a grand symphonic look at the first inspiring and heart-rending moments of the American experiment. The word on the tree that Governor John White found in the abandoned colony may have been the mysterious “Croatoan,” but the words that resound in our hearts are Old Tom’s “Roanoke, oh, Roanoke . . .”
Accepting for the Roanoke Island Historical Association, Theatre Manager Brandon Smith responded, Listening to Mr. Simpson’s remarks, I’m reminded of the reason that The Lost Colony came to be in the first place. If someone today came to our politicians and said, “We want to build a theatre for a play, on an island that no one can get to, and we want to use tax dollars to do it,” they might be laughed out of the room. But the reality is that in its seventy-five years, The Lost Colony has created over fifteen thousand jobs and is responsible for well over a half a billion dollars in tourist revenue on the Outer Banks. It is an example of the power of the arts to change lives both in the ethereal and economic sense. We continue to be proud of our organization for its artistic integrity, but also as a realistic application of the arts in the modern day economy. A place like the Outer Banks needs both. On behalf of the board and the entire staff I thank you. We are very humbled by your recognition tonight and we hope to see each of you at the theatre! n above The full cast and crew during the 75th season of The Lost Colony