Carolina Alumni Review - July/August 2007

STRUCT URES
Take Your Act Outdoors? The Forest Awaits

UNC dramatic arts lecturer David Adamson ’ 78 (MFA, ’ 79 LICDA) is a fan of outdoor drama and often takes his acting classes to the Forest Theatre to practice “big, declarative Shakespeare speeches” and Greek plays. In 2003, he directed a performance of As You Like It in the theater.

The site’s atmosphere suits Shakespeare, he says. But the outdoor venue presents challenges not encountered in the University’s more technically equipped indoor theaters. The Forest remains a lovely spot, tucked against Battle Woods on the eastern edge of the campus, but it also wears the forlorn look of the unkempt.

Once a primary venue for performing arts at Carolina, it has seen both its popularity and its structural integrity decline in recent decades.

Now, efforts by the N.C. Botanical Garden, which assumed management of the theater and surrounding Battle Park in 2004, hold the possibility of breathing new life into the old stones.

“It’s so rich with history,” said Jonah Garson, a rising junior and a longtime Chapel Hill resident whose Single Shot Theatre Company staged Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar at the theater in August 2006.“It’s inexcusable to let something go by the wayside like that.”

Accounts of the theater’s early years vary, but Scott Parker ’ 71 (MA) at UNC’s Institute for Outdoor Drama said one of the first productions on the “grassy hillside in Battle Park” was a 1917 performance of Surrender to the Enemy by Paul Green ’ 21. Two years later, the Forest Theatre was landscaped, and the Carolina Playmakers began performing annual shows there.

Stone walls and trees were added later, and in 1943, a $20,000 grant from the Works Progress Administration paid for the flagstone steps leading down the hillside to the stage. In 1953, the Forest was dedicated to Professor Frederick Koch, renowned folk dramatist and founder of the Carolina Playmakers.

Into the 1970s, the Forest was used regularly for productions by the UNC drama department and the Carolina Playmakers. It still hosts a number of community group performances and weddings each year, but it is rarely used for University-sponsored productions.

Under the direction of Botanical Garden natural areas curator Stephen Keith ’ 94, the theater already has received stonework repairs, a new stagehouse roof, and renovations to the backstage bathroom and dressing room. But those efforts are just a starting point.

“The Forest Theatre needs a good deal of renovation before it’s functional and suitable,” Parker said. Needed improvements include new electrical wiring, floors and

DURWOOD BARBOUR COLLECTION OF NORTH CAROLINA POSTCARDS, NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION

ceilings in the two lighting towers, enhanced backstage facilities, a public restroom and better accessibility for people who are disabled.

Parker grew up around the theater, taking tickets and helping his father, a dramatic arts professor at UNC, set up for shows. In 1994, he even had his wedding in the theater, complete with a Scottish bagpiper.

Parker has seen numerous restoration attempts fail to get off the ground. “I suppose about every two or three years someone calls me up and says, ‘Hey, I just discovered the Forest Theatre, have you heard of it?’” he said.

In fall 2006, Paul Kapp, UNC’s campus historic preservation architect, joined Botanical Garden staff members and Garson in meetings to discuss the theater’s future. In the spring, Kapp applied for a grant to do design work on a restoration.

Botanical Garden Director Peter White said the

This scene from the Forest Theatre’s early days shows how it looked before the stone walls, lighting towers and tiered stone seats were added. The photo is from a postcard in the Durwood Barbour Collection given to UNC’s North Carolina Collection this year.

The Forest remains a lovely spot, tucked against Battle Woods on the
eastern edge of the campus, but it also wears the forlorn look of the unkempt.

group has planned a renovation of the Forest Theatre since assuming management of the area two years ago. The Botanical Garden has recently had success raising funds for projects in the Coker Arboretum, Battle Park and a new visitor’s center.

“I think if it were fixed up, different people would find reasons to use it,” David Adamson said. “Productions do happen there, and if it were made a little more welcoming to a company, more would happen.”