Snow Camp Outdoor Theater
| Snow Camp Historical Drama Society | |
|---|---|
| Established | 1973 |
| Location | Snow Camp, North Carolina |
| Director | Dean Jones |
| Website | Snow Camp Theatre |
The Snow Camp Theatre is an outdoor repertory theater company presenting several dramas each summer in Snow Camp, an unincorporated community in southern Alamance County, North Carolina. The theatre is supported by the Snow Camp Historical Drama Society, Inc., with grants from the Theatre Arts Section of the North Carolina Arts Council, the North Carolina General Assembly, and the National Endowment for the Arts.[1]
Its two key plays are the The Sword of Peace (1973) by William Hardy and Pathway to Freedom (1995) by Mark Sumner.[2] Both plays examine local Quaker involvement in past events, especially the Revolutionary War and the Underground Railroad. The plays are set within the local context of the Cane Creek Friends Meeting, a Quaker congregation established October 7, 1751, in what is now southern Alamance County. (Snow Camp was for a time part of Guilford County during the Revolutionary-era events of Sword of Peace). The Cane Creek meetinghouse is a few hundred feet from the amphitheater.
Other productions include a musical and children's theater, which change annually.
The 2015 plays, in addition to the mainstays, will be Dracula and Treasure Island (kids play).
The Sword of Peace
The Sword of Peace is a drama of the American Revolution war period and the struggle of the pacifist Quakers. Two days after the Battle of Guilford Court House, the British army moved south, where some stopped at Snow Camp and took over the house of Simon Dixon, patriarch of the Quaker community. It was first produced here in 1973.
Author William Hardy was an actor and novelist and a member of the faculty of the Department of Radio-Television and Motion Pictures at the University of North Carolina. He also served as a long-time director of Kermit Hunter's Unto These Hills, an outdoor drama about the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in the early 19th century, presented every summer since 1950 in Cherokee, North Carolina.
Pathway to Freedom
Pathway to Freedom is a drama about Quakers involved in supporting abolition and the Underground Railroad.
Sumner was the long time producer of the Lost Colony, a show written by Pulitzer Prize winning author, Paul Green. The Lost Colony is a drama created for outdoor staging. It is about the Native Americans and colonists on Roanoke Island and presents an interpretation of the failure of the colony.
See also
- Lost Colony
- Unto These Hills
- Roots: The Saga of an American Family parts of which also took place in Alamance County.[3][4]
External links
- Museum Displays outside the theatre
- Pictures from Sword of Peace (2010)
- Pictures from Pathway to Freedom (2010)
- Pictures from 2010
- Pictures from 2011
- Pictures from 2012
- Pictures from 2013
- Pictures from 2014
Notes
- ↑ Dr. William Heizer, Chairperson, Board of Directors, Snow Camp Historical Drama Society, Inc., (2015), Souvenir Program Missing or empty
|title=(help) - ↑ Snow Camp Outdoor Theatre
- ↑ Lee Anderson III, William. "Notes about Scotch-Irish and German Settlers in Virginia and the Carolinas". Home of the Ulster-Scots / Scotch-Irish in America. Retrieved 2008-08-23.
- ↑ Thorner, James (1996-01-29), "Small Local Town has a Large Past", Greensboro News & Record