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A Portrait of a Pirate: Artistic director of Triad Stage and area musician create a large-cast production about the legendary Blackbeard
NyghtFalcon Photo
In the play are (from left) Michael Tourek, Mark David Watson and Lelund Durond Thompson.
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Published: June 8, 2008
Imagine a large man with thick black hair and clusters of hemp flaming from his long hair and beard. Some, they say, shuddered at the mere sight of him. Even the flag on his pirate ship could prompt terror.
Such is the stuff of legend -- and the original play, Bloody Blackbeard, which will begin its run today at the Triad Stage in Greensboro. For the third time in Triad Stage's six-year history, its artistic director, Preston Lane, and an area musician, Laurelyn Dossett, have combined forces for an original production. Lane came up with the script, and Dossett has written most of its music.
There is probably no child in America who hasn't heard of our pirates, and schoolchildren in North Carolina, particularly, have heard the name Blackbeard. Blackbeard mythology -- that of a feared pirate and a local resident -- covers our coastline and imaginations.
Lane, originally from Boone, says, yes, he had heard of Blackbeard as a child in elementary school, but simply wasn't that interested in him, or the coast.
"I'm from the mountains, and the coast of North Carolina, until very recently, has been sort of a mystery to me," he said. "My family never went there on vacations. We had family in Florida and went there."
True to Lane's mountain origins, he tapped its folklore to create the two previous, original plays for Triad Stage -- Brother Wolf and Beautiful Star: An Appalachian Nativity. Both included Dossett's original music, and both were extremely successful for the theater.
Bloody Blackbeard's content will not be as tame as Lane and Dossett's previous shows -- it includes a lot of killing, sword fighting and one sexually suggestive scene, which, according to Lane, prompted the company to issue a PG-13 warning for this show.
Blackbeard will also have the largest cast of actors ever assembled at Triad Stage -- 25 actors and musicians.
Perhaps more exciting is the subject. Blackbeard, also known as Edward Teach and Edward Thatch, was a notorious English pirate in the early 18th century who sailed the waters between the East Coast and the Caribbean and lived in North Carolina for two years after moderating his taste for plunder.
Little is known as fact about him, and one early history, Blackbeard the Pirate: A Reappraisal of His Life and Times was written by a former Wake Forest University professor, Robert Earl Lee. Lee's book, in fact, was the first that Lane read in preparing for his script.
Lane's script was more than a year in the making, and he was surprised at how quickly he was drawn to a man and region of our state about which he knew so little. A colleague, actor Krista Hoeppner, who played Hedda Gabler at Triad in 2004, encouraged Lane to take up the pirate as an original play, much as Lane had used Beowulf as inspiration for Brother Wolf.
Lane said no at first.
But the idea and his friend's encouragement were there, along with an earlier visit to the coast. In 1992, soon after graduation from the N.C. School of the Arts, Lane had visited the coast for the first time as an actor in the film Super Mario Brothers. "I spent some time in Wilmington and fell in love with the coast."
The Triad Stage staff met in April 2007 to plan the 2008 season. They had picked Amadeus for the big summer blockbuster, but found out that the Playmakers in Chapel Hill had already tapped it.
Suddenly, Lane told the staff, "What if Laurelyn and I do Blackbeard? I tell you what, I'll go get a book about Blackbeard; I'll read it and come back to you tomorrow and tell you whether I think I can do it."
He went to Borders, bought Lee's book, a CD of sea chanties and holed up for the evening. He called Dossett to ask if she'd be interested in composing music. "She said sure, even though she was still thinking he was an imaginary character." (Lane likes to joke that he didn't know much about Blackbeard, but at least he knew he was real, compared to Dossett.)
From there, Lane immersed himself in research. Six trips to the N.C. coast later -- to Ocracoke, Kill Devil Hills, Wilmington, the Outer Banks and Bath -- Lane had talked to locals, read books and visited maritime and history museums all over the coast. He did not, however, watch any of the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise. "I didn't want to be influenced."
What he came up with was what others had been drawn to -- a larger-than-life character who was known for his fierceness, charisma, fearless battles and possibly 14 wives. "I've met at least three people in this state who claim to be direct descendents of Blackbeard -- and claim it proudly. We have no record of any of his descendants, but I can't but imagine that there are a lot more -- and probably not just in North Carolina."
The big appeal for Lane was the story of Blackbeard. "I realized it was, first and foremost, a great story. A story with enormous scope, and it was a story that I saw,early on, had so many thematic threads to weave together for a play. I became very intrigued by this fierce pirate who could scare people into surrendering just by his appearance."
For his play, Lane fashioned three different aspects of Blackbeard -- the boy who dreams of going to sea, the young man who wants adventure and to make a name for himself and, finally, the fierce pirate of myth, who is haunted by the two younger versions of himself.
Does Lane make him into some good-hearted hero? "No, he's not a Robin Hood character by any means, and there's a dreadful legend down on the coast about his last wife, Mary Ormond, in Bath, that he married her, then shared her with his pirate crews."
Lane said that Blackbeard waged psychological warfare on the colonies.
He, the playwright, has written his own touch of psychology into the character. "I gave him a troubled heart."
■ Triad Stage will present Bloody Blackbeard June 8-July 6. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays (except for Sunday, July 6, no evening show). Friday and Saturday performances are at 8 p.m., and Sunday matinees are at 2 p.m. Preview performances are today, Tuesday and Wednesday (all sold out), and Thursday is opening night. Pirate Family Day, free, will be held 10 a.m.-2 p.m. on Saturday (parental guidance recommended for children under 13). Tickets are $10 to $42. Triad Stage's Pylre Theater is at 232 S. Elm St., Greensboro. For tickets and information, call 336-272-0160.
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