Arthur Farwell...Deja Vu

Remember Arthur Farwell? And his grand dream of nationalistic "community music pagents"? And his absolute conviction that they would be the wave of the future?

I've seen one.

On our vacation to the Outer Banks of North Carolina last week, we stopped by several touristy sites, including Roanoke Island. There's an outdoor theatre production running there during the summer, entitled The Lost Colony. It's been playing since the 1930s -- the only time it didn't run was during WWII, when the stage lighting would have been visible to Nazi submarines off the coast.

It was originally commissioned by the island residents to celebrate the history of the area and the American founding. Then, riding on the coattails of the New Deal, the producers received a grant from the government to continue staging it, and even got a theatre thrown in to boot. (As my dad remarked, "timing is everything.") There's more on the history of the production here.

Watching that thing was amazing, if only because it was seeing the second half of my research paper in action. Everything was there -- nationalism by the bucketload, hymns and songs and choruses, and connection to the local community.

Aside from that...it wasn't so amazing. The plotting and pacing and music were decidedly mediocre. There's a rather horrendously imposed romantic subplot. And the historical accuracy leaves a quite a bit to be desired. One can make the costumes more accurate over the years (they drastically improved the Native American ones), but the narrative is still bleeding the 1930s and its concerns and prejudices all over the place. There's a heavy dose of "YAY AMERICAN VALUES! YAY AMERICA! YAY PIONEERS! YAY TURNER THESIS!" So you pretty much have to watch it as a fascinating snapshot into the era in which it was written, not as a closely accurate (or even well-produced) docu-drama.

Still...wow. I wasn't expecting something like that, going in, and it was pretty cool to get a belated epilogue to my semester of research. :)