By Bill Hand
Our theatre has told the story of a New Bern duel that happened in 1802, and we’ve shared the adventures as Wilbur and Orville Wright invented the airplane in 1903.
This year we’re bringing you into the mountains of Civil War North Carolina to meet a young man and his bride who were deeply in love – and deeply involved in the bushwhacking wars between northern and southern sympathizers.
“Bushwhackers” is the collaboration of Bill Hand (book and lyrics) and composer James Merritt (score and lyrics). It covers roughly five years during which Keith and Malinda Blalock put their lives on the line for the Union cause.
The Carolina mountains saw some of the most desperate fighting during the war—much of it between un-enlisted fighters who robbed and murdered their neighbors who dared to support the other side. It was truly “brother against brother,” as relatives sometimes shot it out against each other—and the Blalocks weren’t immune to such shenanigans. Throughout the war Keith and Malinda saw beloved relatives murdered—and, on at least one occasion did in a relative, themselves.
A year after the war, Keith Blalock killed the man he felt was responsible for the death of one of his closest relatives and found himself facing a murder charge. In “Bushwhackers” Keith and Malinda tell their attorney their story through flashbacks and song.
Playing the leads are Bryce Bivens and Nora Blalock – herself a descendant of the Blalock family. Featured in strong supporting roles are John Rock, John Stilley, James Atchinson, Michael McCullough, Steve Robb, Marilyn Marr, Sara Sirmons and Kathy Martin.
The show is directed by Bill Hand with James Merritt as music director and Roxanne Wheeler, choreographer.
Bushwhackers is high drama and adventure on the stage, full of twists, shootouts and a unique love story – all based on true North Carolina history.
“History is what we’re all about,” Hand said. “This company was founded as a way of mixing two of my greatest loves – history and theater – and using it to teach North Carolinians about who we are, and who we came from. Theater is an excellent teaching tool – more exciting than any pamphlet, and able to get into the hearts and souls of characters than most other media will allow.”
“Each year we have selected a different story from a different part of the state, and a different period,” he added. Hand researches his subjects before putting them to paper.
The first show, “Honour,” was first presented as a fundraiser for the New Bern Historical Society, and told the story of the Stanly-Spaight duel in which John Stanly, a mercurial congressman, killed the short-tempered but beloved Richard Dobbs Spaight, a signer of the Constitution, in a duel near a local schoolhouse.
The two men had argued over what Spaight saw as a slight given against him by Stanly. Spaight challenged Stanly, who declined, but the two men began trading insults via public circulars that finally had Stanly so enraged that he challenged Spaight, who took up the offer… and who was mortally wounded on the fourth exchange of shots.
“That was an easier play to research,” Hand said, as he had portrayed Spaight in a short duel reenactment for several years at Tryon Palace. “I looked at that duel and knew there was so much more to it than the Palace could tell in a few minutes,” he said. His research turned up an interesting subplot about Spaight’s most-favored slave, who had been fathered by John Stanly himself.
“The Wright Brothers were an obvious second choice,” Hand said—the story of the Ohio brothers who came to North Carolina to invent controlled flight is one of the most popular bits of history in the Tarheel state. “They were the ultimate Everyman,” Hand said. “Two brothers who were high school dropouts and bicycle mechanics who achieved what scientists and inventors had been trying to master for thousands of years… and did it for about the price of a small car.”
Bushwhackers takes a lesser known but equally fascinating story of North Carolina’s volatile history.
So what is NC History Theatre planning for the future? “We have so many fascinating and unusual stories to tell,” Hand said. Among the possibilities of future stories, he said, is John Wright Stanly, the father of John Stanly, who helped finance the Revolutionary War through his wealth and his privateering work; the story of Blackbeard the pirate; Dr. Joan Burkholder, a modern-day biologist who exposed deadly microbes in the rivers; and even the famous Siamese twins, Chang and Eng, whose curious lives inspired Mark Twain’s writing.
“There’s so much to tell,” Hand said, “and we’re working to find ways to tell it.”