Press Release

 

Triad Stage’s Bloody Blackbeard
Continues a Successful Tradition of
Writing with a Regional Voice

 

Cast Announced

(Greensboro, NC) — Triad Stage, the Greensboro-based regional theatre of North Carolina’s Piedmont Triad area continues its established history of creating works with a regional focus with this summer’s world premiere production of Bloody Blackbeard by Preston Lane with original music by Laurelyn Dossett. Playing June 8 – July 6 and concluding the theatre’s seventh season, this daring adventure with original music tells the story of North Carolina’s infamous adopted son, Edward Teach, also known as the legendary 18th century pirate – Blackbeard.

From England to the Caribbean to the Carolina Coast, Teach forged a blazing career as the most dreaded pirate of all time. As Blackbeard, he was a dashing blend of terror and gallantry. To his victims, he presented an image of the devil incarnate; but he was putty in the hands of a beautiful woman. His high seas exploits, port city romances and deep buried treasure are the stuff of legend.

After two hugely successful Appalachian-themed collaborations ­– Brother Wolf and Beautiful Star: An Appalachian Nativity – creators Preston Lane and Laurelyn Dossett now turn their attention eastward, weaving story and song together and uncovering the mostly true and totally thrilling history of this scourge of the seas. 

Lane and fellow Yale School of Drama MFA graduate Richard Whittington co-founded Triad Stage only a few short years ago with the mission of reflecting the history and culture of the region it serves. Part of that mission comes in its core value of fostering a unique Southern voice. According to Lane, the Artistic Director, “One of the most obvious problems with American theatre these days is the lack of regional voices. It has been homogenized to the point that everyone everywhere is doing the same season of the same plays.” He explains Triad Stage’s philosophy, “We’ve always believed that a regional theatre should be of its place. It should be about its audience and belong to them, and that’s what we seek to deliver with the classics or through new works.” In addition to such acclaimed productions of Suddenly Last Summer, Tobacco Road, North Star, The Little Foxes and A Lesson Before Dying, Triad Stage has developed a trio of original works created specifically for its regional audiences.

Already an established playwright with several adaptations under his belt, Lane met Laurelyn Dossett of the Piedmont area band Polecat Creek through mutual friends and in 2005, he enlisted her in his plans for Brother Wolf, an adaption of Beowulf set in the mountains of North Carolina. “I’m not sure she knew what she was getting into,” says Lane. “But she was ready for this new experience and we’ve since proved to be a natural writing team.” Brother Wolf was not standard “musical theatre” fare, but a production in which live music coincides with the onstage action. “The benefit of including music within the structure of the play is that it’s just one more place where the audience can attach to the story and really engage in the world that is being created on stage,” explains Dossett. Brother Wolf became a hit for Triad Stage and gained the attention of the National Endowment for the Arts, which awarded the theatre a $10,000 grant. In July of 2007, Lane was invited to remount the play for the Appalachian Summer Festival in his native town of Boone.

Encouraged by the early positive response to Brother Wolf, Lane took another bold step during a pre-show curtain speech when he made the announcement that Triad Stage would be mounting a new project, a retelling of the Christmas Story, but with a definitive regional flare, for the upcoming holiday season – just seven months away. The result was 2006’s Beautiful Star: An Appalachian Nativity. Set in the small Open Heart Community Fellowship mountain church, Beautiful Star was Lane’s homage to his own Baptist Appalachian ancestors and the Bible stories he learned as a child. Dossett infused the music with sounds of Appalachia and the Piedmont, and added some traditional songs of the season for good measure. “Having done an adaptation of Dickens’ Christmas Carol twice as well as David Sedaris’ The SantaLand Diaries in previous seasons,” says Lane, “we were determined to create something specific to this region – a holiday gift crafted just for our audience.”

That gift turned out to be overwhelmingly popular. With a number of pre-Christmas sold-out performances, the 2006 run was such a hit that Triad Stage brought it back for November and December 2007 where it became the highest-grossing and highest-attended production in the theatre’s history, smashing the record set by 2002’s A Lesson Before Dying. Beautiful Star had an additional benefit – new audiences. “Over 60% of the audience had never been to Triad Stage before,” says Managing Director Richard Whittington. “Entire families were coming – grandparents, parents and their children, some returning to see the show for a second or third time.” Even after adding several performances to accommodate ticket buyers, the 2007 production sold out 20 of the 32 performances of its run. Triad Stage has now made the show its holiday tradition, booking it for a third time in 2008.

Both Brother Wolf and Beautiful Star: An Appalachian Nativity have found audiences beyond the region for which they were created. The National Alliance for Musical Theatre in New York invited Lane and Dossett to perform selections from Brother Wolf at its 2007 Songwriter’s Showcase. Dayton Ohio’s The Human Race Theatre Company has announced it will stage a new rendition of the play in collaboration with Rhythm in Shoes in January 2009. “Anna Lee,” a song Dossett wrote for Brother Wolf, was recorded by Levon Helm and included on his Grammy Award-winning CD Dirt Farmer. Beautiful Star is set to be produced by a Texas regional theatre at the end of 2008.

It was Lane’s fondness for legends that led to his third collaboration with Dossett. “Blackbeard was an idea that I had been playing around with for some time at the suggestion of a friend, but I realized the only way the project could work was if Laurelyn signed on. I’m lucky that she shares my love of legends and my sense of the community. Brother Wolf came from this amazing literary legend. Beautiful Star retells the Biblical stories of the Garden of Eden, Noah and the Great Flood and the birth of Jesus – stories that have transcended what we think of as legends. Laurelyn and I were able to make them uniquely ours.”

The infamous pirate, he says, was different. “As a native of the Appalachian region my focus has been on the Western part of our state. Blackbeard and his life on the sea was very distant history to me.” The project was not without its difficulties and Lane and Dossett faced a daunting task. While they had ample source material, much of it was contradictory, incomplete or full of speculation. “I had to find a way into the story through all the books and conflicting theories,” says Lane. “What finally inspired my work were not the facts, but legend.” He made repeated trips to the Outer Banks area to research Blackbeard and pirate folklore. “The North Carolina coast, particularly in the winter, is a place haunted by the ghosts of legends past,” he explains. “In focusing on the sense of myth, I was able to find a commonality with the broader sense of southern storytelling that has been the basis of my work with Laurelyn.”

Dossett describes her challenge. “As an artist, I was out of my comfort zone. And there’s not a record of exactly what music might have been on his ships,” she says. “So I have pulled together ideas from old sea shanties, English folk tunes and Caribbean instrumentation. In the end it is simply American folk music – a synthesis of old and new, foreign and local.” Then there is the matter of the lyrics. “The language of 1700s pirates is another thing. Writing the lyrics had an extra step or two. First figure out what I want the song to say, then find old pirate phrases to say it, then fit those into the metre and rhyme scheme of the song, with a melody and instrumentation that fits the period, the character and the scene.”

The end product of their months of researching, writing and rewriting will be onstage for the all to see come June 8 – July 6 when Triad Stage presents the world premiere adventure Bloody Blackbeard. Opening Night is June 12.

The sponsor for Bloody Blackbeard is the VF Corporation, with additional support from Our State magazine and the Greensboro Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. Triad Stage has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for Bloody Blackbeard’s development. The production is a THTR 232 presentation, a collaboration of Triad Stage and the University of North Carolina, Greensboro’s Department of Theatre.

Bloody Blackbeard boasts the largest ensemble in the theatre’s history – 25 actors and musicians. The cast includes: Mark David Watson as Blackbeard, TJ Austin, Allan Edwards, Isabelle Gardo, Shay Lydick, Kaleigh Kathleen Malloy, Emily Mark, Melanie W. Matthews, Christine Morris, Jason Scott Quinn, Andrew Rein, Marvin Riggins Jr., Joby Lee Strachan, Lelund Thompson, Michael Tourek, Jeffery West, Beau Wigington, Chris Wright and Josh Yoder. The band includes: Evan Frierson, Scott Johnson, Scott Manring, Molly McGinn and Max Spiewak. The creative team includes: scenic designer Alexander Dodge, costume designer Kelsey Hunt, lighting designer John Wolf, sound designer David E. Smith, fight choreographer Jim Wren and dialect coach Christine Morris. The stage manager is Catherine Hagner and the assistant stage manager is Eric Tysinger.

Bloody Blackbeard will be performed at The Pylre Theater, home of Triad Stage, at 232 South Elm Street in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina.

Tickets for Bloody Blackbeard are on sale now and can be purchased on line at www.triadstage.org or through the Box Office by calling (336) 272-0160 or toll-free at (866) 579-TIXX, Tuesday – Friday, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm. Ticket prices are $10 – $42, depending on performance date and seat location.

Pre-production Concerts
The Bloody Blackbeard band will be performing selections from the play at two concerts prior to the production. The first concert is on Friday, May 16 at 7:30 pm in Greensboro’s Downtown Cultural Arts Center, at the corner of N. Davie Street and Friendly Avenue. The second concert is on Friday, May 23 at 8:00 pm at The Garage at 110 W. Seventh Street in Winston-Salem.

About the Writers

Preston Lane (Triad Stage Artistic Director/Co-Founder, Playwright & Director) is in his 7th season at Triad Stage, having directed over 28 productions including: the Grand Opening production Suddenly Last Summer, the award-winning Hedda Gabler and A Streetcar Named Desire, last season’s acclaimed Tobacco Road and the return of Brother Wolf for An Appalachian Summer Festival, and this season’s record-breaking reprise of Beautiful Star. He was formerly Artistic Associate at the Dallas Theater Center where his productions included the US premiere of Inexpressible Island (Dallas Observer Best of Dallas Awards: Best Director, Best Production) and The Night of the Iguana (Dallas Morning News:2002 Top Ten Theatre List). Other productions include: A Tuff Shuffle (National Black Theatre Festival), Overruled (Off Broadway), Love! Valour! Compassion! (Stage One), and the world premieres of If Only and Get It While You Can (Summer Cabaret).  As a playwright, he is recipient of a grant from the Fox Foundation to develop Wondrous Love. Other adaptations and original works include Hedda Gabler, Dracula, Mirandolina, Julie’s Dance, Brother Wolf, Beautiful Star, and the upcoming Bloody Blackbeard (Triad Stage), A Christmas Carol (Dallas Theater Center, Sonoma County Rep, Kids Who Care), Three Weeks After Marriage and Helen! (Summer Cabaret). He has taught at UNC Greensboro, N.C. A&T University, NC School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University, and the Professional Actors Workshop at the Dallas Theater Center. He is an alumnus of the Drama League of New York’s Director’s Project. A native of Boone, NC, Preston received his MFA from the Yale School of Drama.

Laurelyn Dossett (Composer & Music Director) Singer/songwriter Laurelyn Dossett was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and raised in a hymn-singing family. Laurelyn’s collaborations with Preston Lane include the upcoming June 2008 premiere of Bloody Blackbeard, and Triad Stage’s world premiere productions of Brother Wolf and Beautiful Star: An Appalachian Nativity. One of the songs from Brother Wolf, “Anna Lee,” appears on Levon Helm’s 2007 Grammy Award-winning CD Dirt Farmer. She is the 2004 winner of MerleFest’s Chris Austin Songwriting Contest for her gospel song, “Come by Here,” and has taught songwriting at the Augusta Heritage Center. In 1997 she founded the band Polecat Creek with singing partner Kari Sickenberger; they have three CDs: Ordinary Seasons, Salt Sea Bound and Leaving Eden. Leaving Eden’stitle track, about the loss of textile jobs in Eden, NC, has been featured in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and on the BBC. She lives in Greensboro with her husband and three daughters.

 

Triad Stage is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization based in Greensboro, North Carolina. Season sponsorship comes from the North Carolina Arts Council, the United Arts Council of Greater Greensboro and Mitre, the official design firm of Triad Stage.

More information about Triad Stage can be found online at www.triadstage.org.