The outdoor drama, also known as the symphonic outdoor drama or symphonic drama, is a kind of historical play, often featuring music and dance, staged in outdoor amphitheaters in the location it depicts.
It is most like the historical pageants performed in Europe in the Middle Ages. The best known example of a religious pageant in this style is the Oberammergau Passion Play , performed in Oberammergau, Germany since 1643. Many spectacular outdoor stage events became popular in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These pageants were not narrative dramas in the traditional sense, but they showed a series of scenes in which historical events followed one another.
The Ramona Outdoor Play, commonly known as The Ramona Pageant, is America's longest-running outdoor drama, first performed on April 13, 1923, in Hemet, California. The play is based on Helen Hunt Jackson's 1884 novel "Ramona," which was written to expose the mistreatment of Native Americans in Southern California. [1]
People in eastern North Carolina sought to share the story of the Roanoke Colony by staging a pageant, which debuted in 1937 as The Lost Colony . Southern playwright and Lost Colony author Paul Green and musician Lamar Stringfield provided the book and music for the production, which was originally only intended to run for one season. [2]
Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Green wrote those words about The Lost Colony in 1938, a year after its debut. By then, America's first outdoor symphonic drama was a critical and popular success, proof that "people's theatre" could work. By the 1950s, North Carolina led the nation in outdoor dramas, with other notable productions including Unto These Hills at Cherokee and Horn in the West at Boone among others. [4]
The Lost Colony was presented with a Tony Honor for Excellence in Theatre in 2013, recognizing the enduring appeal of the form. [5]
The Passion Play or Easter pageant is a dramatic presentation depicting the Passion of Jesus: his trial, suffering and death. The viewing of and participation in Passion Plays is a traditional part of Lent in several Christian denominations, particularly in the Catholic and Evangelical traditions; as such Passion Plays are often ecumenical Christian productions.
The Ramona Outdoor Play, formerly known as The Ramona Pageant, is an outdoor drama staged annually in Hemet, California, since 1923. It is loosely based on the 1884 novel Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson.
Unto These Hills is an outdoor historical drama during summers at the 2,800-seat Mountainside Theatre in Cherokee, North Carolina. It is the third oldest outdoor historical drama in the United States, after The Lost Colony in Manteo in eastern North Carolina and The Ramona Pageant in Southern California. The first version of the play was written by Kermit Hunter and opened on July 1, 1950, to wide acclaim.
Paul Eliot Green was an American playwright whose work includes historical dramas of life in North Carolina during the first decades of the twentieth century. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his 1927 play, In Abraham's Bosom, which was included in Burns Mantle's The Best Plays of 1926-1927.
Terrence Vaughan Mann is an American actor and baritone singer. He is best known for his appearances on the Broadway stage, which include Lyman in Barnum, The Rum Tum Tugger in Cats, Inspector Javert in Les Misérables, The Beast in Beauty and the Beast, Chauvelin in The Scarlet Pimpernel, Frank N. Furter in The Rocky Horror Show, Charlemagne in Pippin, Mal Beineke in The Addams Family, Charles Frohman / Captain James Hook in Finding Neverland, and The Man in the Yellow Suit in Tuck Everlasting. He has received three Tony Award nominations, an Emmy Award nomination, and an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical.
Fort Raleigh National Historic Site preserves the location of Roanoke Colony, the first English settlement in the present-day United States. The site was preserved for its national significance in relation to the founding of the first English settlement in North America in 1587. The colony, which was promoted and backed by entrepreneurs led by Englishman Sir Walter Raleigh, failed sometime between 1587 and 1590 when supply ships failed to arrive on time. When next visited, the settlement was abandoned with no survivors found. The fate of the "Lost Colony" was a celebrated mystery, although most modern academic sources agree that the settlers likely assimilated into local indigenous tribes.
William Ivey LongII is an American costume designer for stage and screen. His most notable work includes the Broadway shows The Producers, Hairspray, Nine, Crazy for You, Grey Gardens, Young Frankenstein, Cinderella, Bullets Over Broadway and On the Twentieth Century.
Horn in the West, written by playwright Kermit Hunter, is an outdoor drama produced every summer since 1952 in the Daniel Boone Amphitheater in Boone, North Carolina. The show, the oldest revolutionary war drama in the United States, was about the life and times of the hardy mountain settlers of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. It covers a time period during the American Revolution between the Battle of Alamance in 1771 and the Battle of King's Mountain in 1780. The story follows the family of Dr. Geoffrey Stuart, a British loyalist, who is forced to flee the lower colony due to the actions of his son during the Battle of Alamance. Led into the mountain country by frontiersman Daniel Boone, Stuart must come to terms with his own loyalties, which are divided between his country and his son.
The Lost Colony is an historical outdoor drama, written by American Paul Green and produced since 1937 in Manteo, North Carolina. It is based on accounts of Sir Walter Raleigh's attempts in the 16th century to establish a permanent settlement on Roanoke Island, then part of the Colony of Virginia. The play has been performed in an outdoor amphitheater located on the site of the original Roanoke Colony in the Outer Banks. More than four million people have seen it since 1937. It received a special Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre award in 2013.
The North Carolina Symphony (NCS) is an American orchestra based in Raleigh, North Carolina, with sixty-six full-time musicians. The orchestra performs in Meymandi Concert Hall and performs occasionally with the Carolina Ballet and the Opera Company of North Carolina. In 2017–18, the organization celebrated its 85th anniversary season. Concert series are also performed across North Carolina in the cities of Chapel Hill, Cary, Southern Pines, New Bern, Wilmington, and Fayetteville, among others.
The Snow Camp Theatre is semi-professional theatre company in Snow Camp, an unincorporated community in southern Alamance County, North Carolina that brings the voices of the past into the hearts and minds of a modern audience from around the world by producing engaging historical dramas that inspire and entertain.
Cross and Sword was a 1965 play by American playwright Paul Green created to honor the 400th anniversary of the settlement of St. Augustine. It was Florida's official state play, having received the designation by the Florida Senate in 1973. It was performed for ten weeks every summer in St. Augustine for more than 30 years, closing in 1996.
Ira David Wood III is an American actor, author, singer, theater director and playwright. He is the Executive Director of Theatre in the Park, a community theatre company in Raleigh, North Carolina. Wood is the father of actress Evan Rachel Wood.
Chapel Hill Museum was a local cultural and historical museum in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The museum was founded in 1996 by leaders of the Town of Chapel Hill's Bicentennial Committee and celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2006. In the decade since its founding, Chapel Hill Museum averaged over 20,000 visitors a year and provided education programs to over 3,500 local students a year. The museum closed on July 11, 2010.
Lamar Edwin Stringfield was a classical composer, flutist, symphony conductor, and anthologist of American folk music.
William Oscar "W. O." Saunders (1884–1940) was an American newspaper publisher, journalist, essayist, magazine contributor, satirist, and social critic of rural American life and culture. One of his most famous writings was "The Book of Ham."
The Common Glory was an outdoor symphonic drama by Paul Green presented along Lake Matoaka on the campus of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, from 1947 to 1976, except for two years. The drama covered a span from the Jamestown colony's early days to 1782, when the United States of America was established after the colonies gained independence from Great Britain.
Elizabeth Berkley Grimball was an American theatrical and film producer, writer, director, entrepreneur, and educator. She founded and directed Inter-Theater Arts in New York, and produced more than two dozen historical pageants.
From This Day Forward is an outdoor historical drama during summers in the Fred B. Cranford Amphitheatre on Church Street in Valdese, North Carolina. The play was written by Cranford and is performed annually as the flagship show of Old Colony Players.