“No
tongue can tell, no pen describe the woeful catastrophe. No person who was not
there can form any idea of the unexampled scene of human distress.”
—The
American Standard, December, 1811
Directed
by Ruth Engel
Featuring:
Angela Parsons, Elizabeth Evans, Rhianna Mack, Oscar Contreras, Chris Piper
and Tyson Rinehart.
Lighting
design by Jaymes Gregory.
On
December 26th, 1811, the Richmond Theatre burned to the ground. A standing-room
only audience of 600 people had gathered that night to see a touring company
present a billing of several different pieces. During The Bleeding Nun,
a short play of haunted star-crossed lovers, the fire began. Of those 600 in
attendance, seventy died—many women and children, many trampled in the panic
that ensued. The dead included the newly-elected Governor, George W. Smith,
who died after saving his wife’s life. The incident made headlines as far away
as Germany and gave rise to the Second Great Awakening.
In
response to the tragedy, Richmond, VA, erected a church on the ashes of the
theatre and banned all public performance (including street musicians) for eight
years. The price of breaking the law was a ticket for six dollars and sixty-six
cents.
Weaving
together a narrative out of more than twenty different characters in his signature
lyrical-prose style, Clay McLeod Chapman constructs a narrative of the lead
up to and aftermath from the Great Richmond Theatre Fire in the play VOLUME
OF SMOKE. Based on interviews conducted with survivors of the fire in an unpublished
19th-century manuscript, VOLUME OF SMOKE is a beautiful, moving, surprisingly
funny voyage into the heart of disaster and our responses to it.
Playing
March 11 - 27, 2010 (Wednesday
thru Saturdays)
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