Schedule subject to change.
For local schedule contact Roadside Theater at (606) 633-0108.

11 Touring Productions

Mountain Tales, an energetic performance of traditional tales and songs of the Appalachian Mountains.

Pretty Polly, the story of master Appalachian storyteller Polly Branham Johnson, 1864-1947.

South of the Mountain, a dramatic musical about an Appalachian mountain family and the changes they face as farming yields to coal mining.

Leaving Egypt, a dramatic musical, set in the Appalachian Mountains in 1969, telling the story of a family facing the loss of their ancestral home.

Pine Mountain Trilogy, a trio of plays (Pretty Polly, South of the Mountain, and Leaving Egypt), each of which examines a particular place and time through the eyes of an Appalachian family.

Red Fox/Second Hangin', the tale of Doc Taylor, the legendary Red Fox of the Cumberlands, the second man hanged in Wise County, Virginia.

Cumberland Mountain Memories, an entertaining collection of tales and traditional and original music indigenous to the mountains of the Cumberland Plateau.

Borderline, a lively telling, through story and song, of the history of the Scotch-Irish people in Central Appalachia.

Junebug/Jack, a collaboration with Junebug Productions of New Orleans that explores issues of race, class, and place through the stories and songs of two cultures: Southern rural African American and Appalachian.

RoadBug, a collaboration with Junebug Productions that examines traditional and personal stories and music from the African American and Appalachian cultures.

Untitled, a work in progress that celebrates traditional Appalachian Mountain family harmony singing and its role in community life.

Where Roadside Went Last Year

During its national tour, Roadside Theater performed and conducted community residencies in Dayton, Ohio; Deadwood, Spearfish, Lead, and Custer, South Dakota; Lewiston, Maine; Shelby, North Carolina; Georgetown, South Carolina; Madison-Morgan and Franklin Springs, Georgia; Las Vegas, Moapa, and Wells, Nevada; Phoenix, Arizona; the South Bronx, New York; St. Petersburg, Florida; and Zuni, New Mexico. Some of this work included cross-cultural collaborations with Junebug Productions of New Orleans, the Pueblo of Zuni in New Mexico, and Teatro Pregones in New York. Locally, the company worked in Harlan, Letcher, and Pike counties, Kentucky, and in Lee, Scott, Dickenson, Buchanan, and Wise counties, Virginia. Roadside also taught a playwriting course at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and performed at the National Folk Festival in Dayton.

So what else has Roadside been doing ?

Dudley Cocke was elected Chairman of The Ruth Mott Fund's Board of Trustees. Recently he delivered one of the keynote addresses at the biennial Global Network for Cultural Rights Conference in New York City and made a presentation at the Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies.

Ron Short and John O'Neal of Junebug Productions performed and discussed the role of culture in rural economic development at the Governor's Rural Economic Forum in Ruidoso, New Mexico. Ron also joined four other U.S. artists to make a special concert for the Annual Conference of Environmental Grantmakers in Traverse City, Michigan.

Donna Porterfield served on the NEA's American Canvas panel on culture and economic development in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Tamara Coffey was a panelist for "Successful Outreach Programs", presented at the Kentucky Arts Council's annual conference.