Providence Gap

FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT & DIRECTOR

The play you are about to see was written especially for you. Think about that.

It took two years to write. A month to rehearse. The scenery, costumes, lighting, sound and props were designed by world class artists with long standing relationships to Triad Stage and its community. The physical world on stage was built right here, by Triad residents. The actors come from as far away as New York and as nearby as right down the street. It is not an assembly line product to be mass marketed and reproduced. It is made by hand with love and care for this moment, for this performance. In financial terms, it cost more to make than it will earn at the box office—hence the not-for-profit status of the theater where you are sitting.

For nine seasons, Triad Stage has been making theater here for you. We have made a commitment to defining American theater right here on Elm Street as a home for story in the heart of the Triad, proudly declaring that our national theater is not to be found in the theme park shows of Times Square, but on all the stages across the U.S. that, to paraphrase an old time hymn, brighten the corner where they are.

Part of our commitment is the ongoing project that is at the heart of the work Laurelyn and I do—crafting a new form of aggressively American theater combining music and story rooted in the people and places of our region. Every aspect of this play is homegrown. Every aspect of this play is authentically of this place. Every aspect of this play stands in contrast to the megaplex mentality of entertainment and offers you a chance to stop, to sit, to listen and to share in the very first time this story has ever been told.

So, welcome to Providence Gap. The wind whines through the mountains of a winter night. It’s a strange kind of spot, somewhere way up in the Blue Ridge. There’s a rowan tree—some say it’s magic. There’s a baby waiting to be found. There’s the promise of journey. There’s the lure of the textile mills. There’s the rumor of war. And there’s voices calling you deeper into the night.

Who can say where this play came from? There’s bits of Pericles by Shakespeare, a night spent in a Parkway motel in a barren winter, windy gap, a trip to Glencoe, a desire to honor my grandfather’s journey down to the textile mills of Hickory and his yearning for home, memories of trying to tune into the Grand Ole Opry on my first car’s AM radio, a question or two about luck, an argument with providence and a disbelief in fate.

But if Providence Gap’s origin is uncertain, its reason for being is not. It exists because of you. It exists because you have welcomed our stories to this community and are willing to share a couple hours to hear us tell our tale. Thank you for listening

Preston Lane

 

FROM THE COMPOSER

Music makes thieves of us all. My life of crime started when I was in the third grade when I stole my mother’s radio from the kitchen. Every day she’d haul the heavy wooden box back to the Formica counter and every night I’d steal it back. My parents finally got me my very own radio, beige plastic with a faux wooden panel on the front; it sat close to my pillow bringing me the blues from Chicago, jazz from New York City, the Grand Old Opry, of course, and late night words of war, Watergate. I was desperately afraid of the dark, but with my radio I was never alone in the night. It kept me and my young dreams and fears company until I left home for good.

When Appalachian music left home—when those old ballads and fiddle tunes came down the mountain it got mixed up with Piedmont blues, slave songs, parlor tunes. The likes of Mr. Ralph Peer took those old songs (some folks say stole them), and made them shorter and sweeter and put them on the radio for all the world to hear, twisted and turned into what we now know as early country western and Bluegrass music.

We have all benefitted from the crime. Unforgettable music was saved by those recordings, and no one who could afford a cheap transistor need be alone in the night again. But what was once passed from mother to daughter, neighbor to traveler, friend to stranger, the radio stole that voice-to-heart intimacy. People used to sing together in work and worship, in joy and sorrow. Most had some custom of singing at the deathbed, the voice and song to keep the dying company as they go. “You’ve got to walk that lonesome valley, you’ve got to go there by yourself,” the Carter Family sang on border radio XERA in 1938, at once stealing and saving that old song.

In the year before Preston and I started writing Providence Gap, my own circle lost several loved ones: a gracious grandmother, a generous father, a mother of daughters like my own. I had the privilege of singing at both bedside and graveside and bore witness to the power of song to connect us. I don’t know what I believe about what is on the other side of death, but the borderlands are dark and lonely, the River of Jordan deep and wide. Our loved ones hold on to us as they take their leave, and the singing eases the way when talking doesn’t matter anymore. So the ideas of singing over home and a song that would connect a family forever were woven into the story of Providence Gap.

It is my good luck to have master musicians Carl Jones and Scott Manring take these simple songs and make them magical. It is our good fortune to have the voice of Alice Gerrard as our own Lady of the Mountain; thank you, Alice, for every song you have ever sung. But it is pure providence to have Preston Lane as my partner in crime, never afraid of the dark. We are sending this story out into the night, voice to heart.

Laurelyn Dossett