Outdoor Theatre

Historical Dramas, Shakespeare Festivals Weather a Changing Climate

by Tom DeTitta

As you travel due east from Chapel Hill, NC, along the coastal plain, the land increasingly gives way to the sky above as it approaches the Outer Banks, where one final gasp of terra firma spills out into the ocean. With the sound on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other, the sky above reigns supreme.

It was in this area in 1937 that the tradition of putting theatre under the stars began with the first production of Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Green’s play The Lost Colony, which has been performed in Manteo, NC, every summer since, except for a brief period during World War II. The play, about the first colony of English settlers on Roanoke Island who mysteriously disappeared, began a national historical drama movement.

As historical dramas opened on outdoor stages across the country, Shakespeare festivals also multiplied in parks and under tents. Religious pageants, such as the Hill Cumorah Pageant in upstate New York and Shepherd of the Hills in the Ozark Mountains, also presented their stories outdoors where the heavens seemed most present. Other organizations also embraced the draw of nature, presenting musicals and other shows outdoors. While their missions and audiences differed, all shared a common experience.

“There’s always that part of outdoor drama when you’re standing in the rain, you don’t know if you need to cancel, you’re wet, and you think ‘Why am I doing this?’ ” said Melissa Nicholson, a former cast member of The Lost Colony who went on to co-found Shakespeare in the Park, now part of Gamut Theatre Group, in Harrisburg, PA. “Then, you have those perfect nights under the stars with perfect weather, and it’s magic. When those good nights happen, it’s unlike anything else, and all the actors who have ever done outdoor theatre will tell you that, too.”

But today, some of the footlights that fought back against the dark of night have begun to dim. Historical dramas and religious pageants, once as prolific along the Southeastern American landscape as Waffle House and Winn-Dixie, are struggling to keep afloat or closing shop altogether.

“Among the historical dramas, there has been, over the past 20 years, a significant decline in attendance of the older productions, and a number of them have closed,” said Michael Hardy, former director of the Institute of Outdoor Theatre, an umbrella group serving organizations that present shows outdoors, which became part of SETC in 2017.

While not experiencing the same steep attendance decreases as the outdoor historical dramas, the Shakespeare festivals that report their attendance to SETC’s outdoor theatre division also saw an overall 15 percent downturn last year.

But even as the traditional forms of outdoor drama have faced audience declines, a site-specific outdoor theatre is drawing crowds to a rural area outside Atlanta. Serenbe Playhouse is winning acclaim for its outdoor productions that engage audiences with a degree of spectacle that is impossible to achieve in an indoor theatre and with its immersive experiences that put audiences squarely in the play’s environment. Its success is just one of many factors giving hope to traditional outdoor theatres that, with innovation front and center, the power of live theatre under the stars can draw crowds once again, overcoming the magnetic pull of television, computer and phone screens.

“We’re at a time when we all have to be creative,” said Marina Hunley-Graham, artistic director at Unto These Hills, the outdoor drama that tells the story of the Cherokee in North Carolina before and after the Trail of Tears. “The more unique we can make things, the better.”

Bitten by technology and bugs

Why did audiences and artists once happy to be exposed to the elements begin running for cover? What led to the changing outdoor theatre landscape?

“We are being challenged by a number of things,”said Johnny Warren, the managing artistic director of The Stephen Foster Story, a Paul Green play that has been staged for 61 seasons outside of Bardstown, KY, celebrating the life and songs of the famed American composer. “There were changes in tourism behavior,changes in the motor coach industry [and] more and more entertainment opportunities from technology, [in addition to an increasing] societal addiction to air conditioning.

“Public school calendars grew shorter during the summer, which cut into our seasons by as many as four weeks,” Warren continued. “There seems to bean increasing fear of bugs, as well as a fear of being outdoors in the summer, which is driven by the way local weather stations talk about heat indexes, when the truth is, at 8 p.m., with a cool drink in hand, you’re perfectly comfortable outdoors pretty much anytime during the summer.”

Bill Coleman, CEO at The Lost Colony, which draws most of its audience from weekly beach rentals along the Outer Banks, notes the many new features these homes are now outfitted with, from surround-sound televisions to rooftop hot tubs.

“It’s become a whole lot easier to just stay home,” he said.

Another issue for the outdoor historical dramas has been stagnation. From the 1980s to the early 2000s, more than 60 communities in the U.S. explored the prospect of creating a historical drama with the Institute of Outdoor Theatre – but less than a handful of shows resulted, and those that opened didn’t last long. The lack of new initiatives can be traced in part to a belief that communities who wanted to start an outdoor historical play needed to do what had been done successfully at shows like The Lost Colony. This included following certain guidelines and coming up with millions of dollars upfront to build an amphitheatre, like those found at the outdoor productions which had been operating for years. Shakespeare festivals, on the other hand, often started in a park with lawn chairs and portable toilets.

“Unfortunately, the notion was that there was a formula for creating an outdoor [historical] drama that was very specific, and if you followed that formula – down to very specific theatre design mandates, even – you could have a successful outdoor drama,” said Hardy. “That turned out not to be the case.”

Because that formula limited the development of new works, the genre of outdoor historical theatre also missed the wave of new ideas that was sweeping historical drama – such as the Broadway musical Hamilton, the hip-hop production about the founding fathers, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s All the Way about Lyndon Johnson’s efforts to pass Civil Rights reform.

This lack of innovation contributed to the overall impression of historical dramas as an old and outdated form of artistic expression that, according to Hunley-Graham at Unto These Hills, was no longer cool.

“We were super cool in the ‘50s and ‘60s,” she said. “But by the 2000s, we had become kind of passé.”

What is being done to reverse the trend? Outdoor theatres are fighting back by adopting a variety of new perks and new philosophies designed to attract audiences.

The Stephen Foster Story in Bardstown, KY, touches on the injustices of slavery, featuring songs such as “My Old Kentucky Home,” inspired by the abolitionist book Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Andy Henderson

Chasing new revenue streams

One of the key strategies that has helped the surviving historical outdoor dramas is the development of new income sources.

Theatres have added to the value of the ticket by including VIP passes, backstage tours, dinners and rain insurance. In addition, many have expanded their budgets by adding educational programs throughout the year based on the main production. Some, too, have added other year-round revenue sources, such as online gift stores.

Alcohol sales also have helped generate additional income at some venues. A staple at the Shakespeare festivals and other theatrical events geared more toward an adult theatre-going audience, beer, wine and mixed drink sales have slid in under the radar at the family-oriented historical dramas and made up for some of the lost ticket revenue.

“We’re right here in the midst of a bourbon tourism state, so we follow suit in our own way,” Warren said. “A big part of our audience for The Stephen Foster Story is faith-based, so we’re not as in your face about promoting liquor [at its performances] as we are at the concerts and musicals we also present.”

The Lost Colony has gone so far as to partner with the Virginia Dare Winery, a Francis Ford Coppola establishment in California that shares the name of a character in the show and markets wines with names such as The Lost Colony and Manteo. Coleman realized he had the perfect location for the winery to hold a wine festival – a realization that netted his company $75,000 in one day from ticket and sponsor revenue. The event, which featured wine tastings, a Vintner’s Dinner and a live auction, was so successful it will return for a third year in September 2019.

The Lost Colony, which has been presented since 1937 in Manteo, NC, has boosted its revenue by partnering with a winery that shares the name of one of the show’s characters, Virginia Dare.

Expanding the season

Outdoor Shakespeare festivals and outdoor historical dramas also have expanded their repertoires in search of new audiences. The Shakespeare festivals have several opportunities that historical dramas lack. First, Shakespeare festivals are not committed to the same plays year in and year out, so they can vary their core offerings. In fact, many are not even fully committed to Shakespeare. Patrick Flick, executive director of the 125-member Shakespeare Theatre Association, which includes both outdoor festivals and indoor companies, notes that many of its members present non-Shakespeare shows as well as plays by the Bard. The imprimatur of Shakespeare offers a form of legitimacy for whatever they do.

“Shakespeare is the most produced playwright in the world and has a certain reputation for quality,” Flick said. “Having his name associated with their work suggests that the other shows these companies do will also have quality.”

Some Shakespeare festivals have created spikes in attendance by adding new types of performances. Montford Park Players in Asheville, NC, noted an increase in younger audiences, particularly parents,after adding a children’s show, Peter Pan, in 2017.

“We added Robin Hood and James and the Giant Peach in 2018, and that nearly doubled our attendance,” said John Russell, executive director of the Montford Park Players.

While most Shakespeare festivals attract predominantly local audiences, (exceptions being larger operations like the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland or the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada), the majority of the audience for historical dramas is tourists drawn from outside the area. During their heyday, it was a common adage in the industry that 80 percent of a show’s audience came from beyond a 60-mile radius of the show,as people from other places were attracted to see a production that could only happen authentically in the place where it is performed. As such, outdoor historical dramas often brought people to small, rural towns they otherwise would never have visited.

Now, some of the historical dramas are trying to increase their local audiences by offering other shows in addition to their original production. At The Stephen Foster Story, Warren has added musicals and concerts throughout the year.

“Stephen Foster appeals to tourists while the concerts and the Broadway musicals appeal to the locals,” he said. “We don’t market the Broadway musicals to an outside audience.”

Similarly, Tecumseh!, produced in Chillicothe, OH, by the Scioto Society, has added additional shows designed to attract new and repeat local patrons.

Tecumseh!, which tells the story of the legendary Shawnee leader during the late 1700s, remains the theatre’s core show even as other events have been added to bring in additional audiences.

Christopher McAlister

Retaining their identity

One of the key challenges for historical dramas as they add new works is to ensure that their other offerings, usually designed for local audiences, don’t encroach on their tourist market or dilute their mission. Historical dramas rely on a clear and easy association in the tourist’s mind: If I am in Cherokee and it is summertime, I can see Unto These Hills.

Brandon Smith, CEO of Tecumseh!, notes that the new events at his outdoor theatre are intended to complement, not compete with or replace, productions of their main show.

“We have not reduced our regular schedule with Tecumseh!,” he said. “We have added other offerings including a bluegrass concert series, which has been very effective, a yearly Shakespeare performance, a Halloween event that runs the month of October, a St. Patrick’s Day fundraiser and other events from time to time. But this company was founded – and continues to exist – to create and foster economic development in our region through the arts, and to tell the story of Tecumseh and promote the important role that our area played in the development of the United States. We cannot do one while ignoring the other. The story is our master. Without it, the company doesn’t need to be here.”

Snow Camp Outdoor Theatre in rural Alamance County, NC, is an example of a historical drama that closed after trying to increase revenue through the addition of shows and events not directly tied to its mission. Elijah Chester, who grew up within earshot of the theatre and is now its general manager/ executive artistic director, says the addition of a Broadway musical, a children’s musical and a drama camp “diluted our mission and our focus on telling our stories well.”

“If you start doing whatever you can to bring people into the seats to make money, then the organization’s vision becomes: Do whatever we have to do to make money,” he said.

Chester, an internationally noted actor and singer who made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera at 23, now is helping Snow Camp resurrect the outdoor drama Pathway to Freedom, which tells the story of the Underground Railroad and the role that Quakers played in helping slaves to freedom. For decades, Snow Camp also produced a second outdoor drama, The Sword of Peace, about local Quakers during the Revolutionary War.

Going forward, Chester plans to offer some year-round programming, but believes it is important to present just one of the historical dramas, Pathway to Freedom, “and let the entire campus reflect it,” he said. With that singular focus, he believes Snow Camp can become a tourist destination for those interested in African American history and specifically in the Underground Railroad. He expects to begin re-staging the production in 2023, the 50th anniversary of Snow Camp Outdoor Theatre’s founding.

In addition to presenting Shakespeare plays such as Troilus and Cressida (above), Montford Park Players has added children’s shows, which have attracted younger audiences to the Ashevillle, NC, theatre.

Sebastian Michaels

A stage takes precedence over a theatre

The historical dramas that have survived continue to rethink their productions with a modern eye, cutting running times for a more restless audience, adding technology and special effects, and even, in one case, inviting the audience onstage for a square dance at intermission. In addition, they are examining their productions in much the same way as Shakespeare companies, which are continually trying to revitalize the work of even older plays by an even older playwright to suit modern sensibilities.

“The Shakespeare festivals are using people specialized in directing to take very old words and strive for ways to make them relevant to today’s audience,” Hardy said. “We don’t always see that as much as we should in some of the traditional outdoor dramas that are struggling.”

As outdoor theatres look for ways to resonate with today’s audiences, they may find some ideas in the experience of Serenbe Playhouse outside of Atlanta. Founder and executive/artistic director Brian Clowdus has received national recognition for taking popular plays traditionally performed indoors and presenting them outside in unexpected ways. When staging Miss Saigon, Serenbe created a temporary stage and a theatre in a field that was large enough to land a helicopter. When staging Titanic, Clowdus placed four stories of scaffolding over a lake, thus allowing actors to plunge into the water when fleeing the sinking ship.

But it isn’t just the increased spectacle that makes these productions interesting. Clowdus’ experience also demonstrates that an expensive theatre is not an essential ingredient of outdoor drama. Serenbe doesn’t have an outdoor amphitheatre, or even a space where the company repeatedly performs its plays. Rather, Clowdus chooses spots on the sprawling campus to build a temporary stage that best realizes the spectacle he hopes to achieve. With a generator to power lights and sound, Clowdus develops a makeshift theatre around that stage, complete with risers, plastic seats, portable toilets and newly constructed concession stands.

“When I make an outdoor location the actual set, I can do shows for a fraction of what they would cost in a standard theatrical setting, and who the hell wants to sit in a dark theatre when you can be on your feet experiencing theatre and looking up at the stars?” Clowdus said. “This work is attracting non-theatre- goers, and this is how art survives – by bringing in new audiences.”

A decade after starting Serenbe Playhouse, Clowdus now has launched a company called Brian Clowdus Experiences to take his site-specific theatre concept to other areas of the country. In September 2019, his company will present a production of The Sound of Music in the hills surrounding the Wintergreen Resort in West Virginia, with guests riding chairlifts to their seats in a remote location on the resort grounds.

His credo for reinventing theatre is similar to the one adopted by those attempting to revolutionize historical theatre: “I love standard theatre, but more and more the average person does not, and so we have to acknowledge that and find ways that theatre can be more exciting than Netflix,” Clowdus said.

In addition to its spectacle-driven plays, Serenbe also stages environmental pieces, such as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, that engage the audience on a variety of fronts by surrounding them with actors and musicians as they walk through the woods from makeshift stage to makeshift stage. This production– reprised at SETC’s 2017 National Conference on Outdoor Theatre, which was hosted by Serenbe – inspired Hunley-Graham to rethink how Unto These Hills presents its show.

The artistic staff at Unto These Hills is looking for ways to make audiences feel a part of that play, such as piping music from the show along the walk to it, and instructing front-of-house staff that they are as important as the actors in creating the environment for the audience.

“People can’t just watch a show for three hours and go home,” Hunley-Graham said. “People are looking to be part of an experience. The more we can do that, the more successful we can be.”

One of the revelations that the Serenbe experience has provided to organizations presenting outdoor theatre is that the audience will forgive – and perhaps even see as part of the outdoor adventure – temporary and minimalist infrastructure if what is onstage is sufficiently captivating. This is an important lesson for people interested in creating new historical dramas but lacking the money needed to build a multi-million dollar amphitheatre in a location tied to the show’s story. The minimalist theatres of the Serenbe model demonstrate a way to make the connection between audience and location more cost-effective – and potentially more immediate and intimate.

“It presumably doesn’t entail as much financial risk because they don’t have to put concrete in the ground,” said Hardy. “It’s cheaper, but it requires more imagination. I think if people can do it and do it with the imagination required for the audience to have a successful theatrical experience, that’s great.”

Titanic, presented in 2018 by Serenbe Playhouse, was set on an actual lake, with four stories of scaffolding representing the ship. Actors jumped into the water and into lifeboats to escape the sinking ship as the audience watched from the shore. Serenbe has achieved critical and audience acclaim with its site-specific shows presented in varying outdoor locations in the Serenbe community near Atlanta – demonstrating that an expensive theatre is not an essential ingredient of outdoor drama.

BreeAnne Clowdus

The future

Although some outdoor historical dramas have disappeared and attendance at others has dropped over the last two decades, a significant number are still being performed throughout the country – telling basically the same story, week in and week out, throughout the summer months, year after year. It may be that the biggest story of these shows is less that they are struggling and more that they still exist. Then, the question becomes why?

“We tell powerful stories, and it’s a history lesson at the same time,” said Hunley-Graham.

Hunley-Graham’s Unto These Hills keeps alive the plight of the nation’s first inhabitants, while The Lost Colony reminds us of the precarious steps taken by those who crossed an ocean to call America home. The Stephen Foster Story touches on the injustices of slavery, with songs such as My Old Kentucky Home, inspired by the abolitionist book Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

“Stephen Foster is the celebrity, but the heroes of the story are the people he wrote music about – the relationship between music and enslaved people in the U.S.,” Warren said. “The conversation of how we tell that story is as relevant as it was 60 years ago. Our story still matters. We still need to tell it, replay it, because we still have lessons to learn from it.”

Elsewhere, outdoor historical dramas recount tales of heroic pioneer settlers, histories of states and communities, and legends that have been passed on, reminding us of who we are and from where we came.

A scene from Pathway to Freedom.

Christopher Hornaday

Because they dramatize compelling stories in a way that is up-close and personal, Warren believes outdoor historical dramas are poised to see increased interest in their productions as people grow increasingly screen-weary.

“There is no screen big enough to replace real people acting, breathing and sweating in front of you,” Warren said. “It is now especially exciting to see real people, to be in touch with the trees, the stars and the relevant and important drama unfolding before your very eyes. I think we’re primed right now to sell how really different we are from your Netflix or iPad.”

Still, outdoor theatres realize they must continue taking steps to make their shows resonate with today’s audiences. As Chester told his board at Snow Camp: “We need to radically rethink everything we did and have a rebirth.”

With the right steps, Hunley-Graham said, “We can be cool again.”

Tom DeTitta is the author of 11 historical and human rights plays seen by more than a quarter of a million people. He also is the director of World Communities Theater: www. worldcommunities.org.

Opera Under the Stars Attracts Crowds in Santa Fe

While many outdoor theatres are struggling, an outdoor opera in Santa Fe, NM, is in its 63rd season, drawing audiences of 85,000 annually. The Santa Fe Opera presents a summer season of opera in a setting complemented by mountain vistas and desert sunsets. The open-air theatre has a roof over all seating areas, with a capacity of 2,126 nightly for its shows.

Audiences can see mountains and the sky behind the set for Don Giovanni at the Santa Fe Opera.

Kate Russell

The Santa Fe Opera will host SETC’s National Conference on Outdoor Theatre Oct. 1-3, 2019, providing attendees with an opportunity to tour the theatre and learn about its operations. The conference is open to all, not just those involved in outdoor theatre. For more information, visit outdoor-theatre.org/conference.