When I was very young, I would stay with my grandparents in Cleveland, TN. It was the Fifties; they liked to watch bowling on TV. According to family legend, I would stand in my crib and when someone would bowl a strike, I would say “that just frills me to death.”

Perhaps it all starts there.

Esquire Magazine once called Theatre an “adventure” career and it has been. It’s not fire fighter or underwater welder, but it has its own thrills, even a bit of applause. I wouldn’t trade the last four plus decades for any other life, and I wouldn’t trade my time here at The Lost Colony. People are passionate about the show, but the most passionate people are those who spend a summer as part of the Colony company. There is a community in each group that lingers long after leaving Roanoke Island. I have been blessed to be part of that community for five summers.

I have decided that performance 5148, the last performance of the 89th season of The Lost Colony, though, will be my last. Someone else will be Executive Director for the 90th season.

We did some good things, the Board and I, during my time here, many of which you’ll never see. Morrison Grove, where the Company lives, has been renovated and transformed. There are new roofs on numerous buildings at the Waterside Theatre, not to mention a new ramp to the Sound Stage. All the backstage decking has been replaced and there is now shoreline protection running from the costume shop up past the Elizabethan Gardens. (Next time you’re out on the Sound, motor by and check it out.) Most noticeable though is all the new technology. We now own some of the most advanced theatrical equipment in the State, right here, outside, on little bitty Roanoke Island. There is a lot of pride in all this even if shoreline protection is not particularly thrilling.

One of my favorite moments in this year’s production is one that you wouldn’t know unless you were backstage. At the end of the first act, when the cast is braving the Atlantic in the glow of 3 Panasonic projectors, there are only two front lights shining on them in the boat; the projectors are doing the work. But when they reach the new world, and the music builds, if you’re standing backstage, you can see two rows of huge expensive lights 55 feet in the air on the house left tower come to life in a warm amber flood. For some reason, it gets me every time. The music, the lights, knowing the cast is about to burst through the chapel doors, I’m not sure why, but it just frills me to death.

Thanks for the frills. Keep supporting this crazy dream.