Faculty and students from The University of SC Theatre Program will be a significant presence this summer in the long-running outdoor drama The Lost Colony, playing for its 71st year on Roanoke Island in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Department Chair Jim Hunter is designing the lighting for the production and Visiting Professor Robert Richmond is directing. In addition, six of our acting students are performing in the show, several in principal roles.

Brian Rooney as Old Tom in 2007

The six student actors are:

MFA Candidate Brian Rooney (playing Old Tom for the second year)

MFA Candidate Nathan Bennett

MFA Candidate Jennifer Burry

Madeleine Hamer (playing Eleanor Dare)

Pressly Coker (playing Ananias Dare)

Travis White

This year's production boasts significant capital improvements, most notably over 1000 brand new costumes. A September, 2007 fire of the show's costume shop destroyed all but a handful of the production's library of over 5000 ornate garments, many the work of the original costume designer Irene Rains. The costumes were most recently designed by five-time Tony Award-winner William Ivey Long, who is also serving as the show's production designer in his 38th year of professional involvement with the production. Long, who is from Rock Hill, SC, has designed costumes for several broadway hits, including The Producers, Hairspray, Nine, Crazy for You, Grey Gardens and Young Frankenstein.

The outdoor arena’s lighting system received a $400,000+ renovation for this year’s production.

The Lost Colony is credited as "the first and longest-running historical outdoor drama" in the country, and still is produced using the original 1937 script by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Paul Greene. According to Department Chair Jim Hunter, that fact makes the choice of Robert Richmond to direct all the more appropriate. "Robert has a real understanding of how to bring life and vitality to established text while still respecting the work," he says.

“I am a firm believer that we can be enthralled, stimulated, and learn a great deal from classical drama,” remarks Richmond. “I believe that this play speaks to all of us—it is an important part of the American cultural collective conscience.”

The Lost Colony runs from May 30 – August 20 at the Waterside Theatre in the town of Manteo on Roanoke Island. The show mixes music, dance and drama to tell the tale of ill-fated first English settlement in the New World, a colony which mysteriously vanished within three years of its founding.

More information about the production is available at www.thelostcolony.org.

Congratulations to all of our department cast and crew!