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