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Waterside
Theatre
The House that
Skipper Bell Built
Roanoke Island’s
Waterside Theatre, the star-canopied home of The Lost Colony,
sprang from the mind and talent of a cigar-chewing personality
known affectionately as Skipper.” Albert
Quentin
“Skipper” Bell, a tall Englishman from Yorkshire, relocated to Canada then
to North Carolina in the late 1920s. When asked why he chose
northeastern North Carolina as his new home, he replied, “I
thought the place was bloody tropical.”
In the early 1930s Bell was working in Edenton as a landscaper
when Frank Stick, an artist and historical researcher, enticed
him to move to the Outer Banks. Stick had designed a small,
log-structured village to represent the 16th-century “Cittie of
Ralegh,” obtaining Works Progress Administration (WPA) funds to
build it on Roanoke Island.
A product of the Yorkshire Trade School system, Bell was adept
at the little-known skills of thatching and constructing log
buildings. He soon became the supervisor of construction for
Stick’s project, which was raised on the grounds of what is now
Fort Raleigh National Historic Site.
In 1936, before Bell could even think of returning to Edenton,
Bradford Fearing, chairman of the Roanoke Colony Memorial
Association (RCMA), convinced him to work on another project—the
construction of an amphitheatre for a play about America’s lost
colony. Bell, working closely with playwright Paul Green,
supervising director Fred Koch and stage director Sam Selden,
began work on the design. Then, using labor from the Civilian
Conservation Corps camp and materials supplied through WPA
funding, construction followed. About six months later, Bell and
his team completed the daunting task.
The original Waterside Theatre provided simple, backless bench
seating for 3,500 patrons. Rain shelters, restrooms and
concession stands were yet to come. Drinks and snacks were sold
by barkers who peddled their products from the aisles of the
house.
Bell referred to the main stage as his permanent set—a
log-structured settlement area that included a chapel, four
cabins and ramparts. His house-right and house-left stages were
transition areas that softened the proscenium walls, allowing
the audience to feel close to the performance.
The house-right stage accommodated a choir loft for singers and
the organist, and a small performance area Bell dubbed the
“Queen’s stage,”
 created
for the performance of the intimate Queen’s chamber scene. The
house-left stage featured the historian’s box and another small
performance area called the “Indian stage,” used as the setting
for King Wingina’s camp.
Under Bell’s watch, Waterside Theatre remained remarkably intact
for 10 years, despite hurricanes, erosion and the unrelenting
Outer Banks sun. But on July 24, 1947, disaster struck when a
fire broke out in the backstage area. Cast, crew, local
residents and fire departments battled the flames to no avail.
The damage was immense. The entire main stage, left wing, two
dressing rooms and the scenery docks were destroyed. The only
items saved were the costumes, tossed into the sound by costumer
Irene Smart Rains, and the assembly bell, which refused to burn.
There was no possibility of a performance that night, so the
company and local residents solemnly
gathered on the main stage amid the smoking embers of the
theatre. The season would have to be cancelled.
Or so they thought. Bell pulled actor Bob Armstrong (John
Borden) aside and told him he could rebuild the theatre in five
or six days if he had the manpower. New logs were no problem; he
needed helpers. “Skipper told me to go out there and be John
Borden,” Armstrong said. “Get him a work force. And I did. That
was the night I really became John Borden.”
True to his word, Bell and a volunteer crew of hundreds of
actors, technicians and residents rebuilt the theatre. Six
nights later, the lights went up on one of the most emotional
performances of the show ever witnessed.
But disaster was to strike again.
Following the close of the 1960 season, Hurricane Donna roared
over Roanoke Island with 100 mph winds. A storm surge destroyed
one side of the backstage area and seriously weakened the main
stage.
Once again, Bell came to the rescue. Over the course of the next
two years, he disassembled the remaining stage structures and
rebuilt the entire theatre, completing enough of the structure
to open in 1961.
A few years later, after cleaning and securing the theatre he
built—and rebuilt—Bell passed away on Sept. 11, 1964. In 1967, a
plaque in his memory was unveiled at Waterside Theatre. But one
of the most lasting memorials to the legendary architect, whom
North Carolina author and journalist Ben Dixon MacNeill called
“the English-born doer of miracles on Roanoke Island,” is the
theatre itself. Bell’s timeless design is still present to greet
every audience member who attends a production of The Lost
Colony. He understood, as the Queen did, that to create and
sustain any project or dream, it is necessary to “make its first
foundations strong, then build atop of it.” As long as there is
a Waterside Theatre, Bell, the “tamer of darkness, fire and
flood” will be remembered.
lebame houston / RIHA Historian |
