Sometimes tragedy leads to joy, loss paves the way for new birth.
That was the case a quarter century ago, on the side of Fancy Gap Mountain, overlooking Cana, Virginia and Mount Airy beyond. This weekend begins the celebration of that new joy, of new birth, as the Cherry Orchard Theater opens its 2023 season this weekend with “An Evening of Storytelling, Music and Poetry” which takes place on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 7pm each Day.
Frank Levering, founder of the theater and owner of Levering Orchard, home of the theatre, said that as part of the celebrations this year the theater is expanding its program with eight different performances in July, August and September.
When he first staged a play locally in the summer of 1999, Levering said he did not expect the work to become a fixture of the local arts scene, with a reach far beyond the mountains and valleys.
“I just envisioned it as a one-off,” he said of that first weekend’s show, a play he wrote that spanned three nights.
This play, and the history of the Cherry Orchard Theater, actually goes back much further—more than a century when Levering’s grandparents settled the land north of the North Carolina-Virginia border with the long-term goal of planting an orchard.
“Ralph and Clara Levering arrived at what is now the orchard in a horse-drawn carriage,” Levering said recently. “That was February 1908. They came all the way from Maryville, Tennessee. My grandmother was eight months pregnant with my father when they got there.”
He said the two settled into a small two-room log cabin. A month later Levering’s father was born and a year later the two built what would later become the family homestead where they lived and what later became Levering Orchard.
87 years later, according to Levering, the house burned down to the foundations.
“Some Guilford College students stayed there,” he said. Levering lived in the newer homestead on the same site where his parents had lived. “One night around 9 a.m. they came running to my house and told me my house was on fire. I thought they were talking about the house I was in, but when I went outside I could see flames shooting out of the roof.”
By the time firefighters arrived and put out the blaze, the roof and chimneys had collapsed, the walls had burned to single-story ruins, and everything else inside was lost.
Not long after, he was strolling the grounds, looking at the ruins of the house his grandfather had built.
“That’s when I got the idea to do a play about the people who lived in this house,” he said. That Levering turned to drama and theater to help deal with tragedy shouldn’t come as a surprise — he spent several years in California as a screenwriter, has authored plays and poetry, and is the author or co-author of half a dozen books. Writing, particularly for performance art, is one of Levering’s passions.
“As usual, it took me a few years to write the play, but I finished the play in early 1999,” he said. He gathered a few friends and local artists to collaborate with him in producing the story.
“We made this piece with the idea of paying tribute to the people who lived in the house, my grandparents, my father and everyone else. I only imagined it as a one-off.”
Residents and visitors to the area brought other ideas to his mind.
“We performed this play over three weekends in the summer of 1999, over 1,200 people came, which was a shock… That’s when the idea of a summer theater came up, which wasn’t really my intention, but I realized that something wonderful could happen here. “
Working with his girlfriend, well-known local storyteller Terri Ingalls, and a few other artists, he put together a 25-season odyssey that led to countless live performances at The Orchard.
“It must be over a hundred,” Levering said of the number of productions that came to life there on the open-air stage. “Probably well over a hundred. “It was at least three or four weekends a year and often a different show every weekend.”
These shows generally ran for three days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and occasionally a second weekend. with another show the following month and another the following month.
Some of the shows there reached a much larger audience and were performed by international stage and television stars. One show, The Distance Between Us, premiered at the Cherry Orchard Theater and eventually found its way to other stages, where actresses Holly Hunter and Amy Madigan played the co-leads.
Another was local resident Dan Hornak, whose portrayal of fictional John Wayne tribute artist Jack Thorne first performed at the Cherry Orchard, but Hornak has also seen the show perform in Texas and at several California venues.
Some of the other shows have also toured, with local actors performing the shows in Mount Airy, Charleston, South Carolina and elsewhere.
But hiring well-known actors or starting a touring show isn’t really what Levering is aiming for at the Cherry Orchard.
“It doesn’t have to be,” he said of his success at the theater. “If it happens, that’s great. But if we’re doing it with a local audience and everyone is having a great time, then that’s what we’re about… something for our community.”
This year the community will have many more opportunities to see the shows and productions at Cherry Orchard as eight different shows are planned.
In addition to this weekend’s offerings, the season’s schedule includes the Celebration of 25 Seasons at the Cherry Orchard Theater from August 4th to 6th and the theater will perform two plays in one evening, August 11th to 13th, featuring The Dead Speak and “The View From Clara’s Porch”.
There will be another evening of two shows on August 18th-20th, with An Evening with the Browns and a short track, “Raw Toads”. From August 25th to 27th there will be an evening on stage with actor Robert Dobson.
Cherry Orchard kicks off the new month with H5, which runs September 1-3 and then September 8-10: All We Know of Heaven. Finally, The Witches Brew: Tales of Appalachian Witches will take the stage September 15-17.
For more information, visit: www.leveringorchard.com/virginia-outdoor-theatre
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