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There was always something needing mending or replacing, so Mama and I would walk over and tend to the problem. I always loved theater people, even though I was a little scared of them with their elaborate wigs, long black eyelashes, and bright red cheeks. The cast was always nice to me, and once they even let me come onstage with them in the finale. I never forgot the excitement of those footlights, the torches that lit the back wall and the cluster of musicians in the sawdust orchestra pit downstage. It only stood to reason that someday I would grow up and help out. Mazie Dinsmore, the grande dame director of the first season, a tugboat of a woman with the vision of Cecil B. DeMille, spotted me early on and taught me how to direct. I served as her prompter (the girl who crouches offstage and feeds lines to the actors who forget where they are or what to say). This was an important job because more than one of our lead actors was known to hit the Old Grand-Dad before and during a performance. One night I fed a tipsy Cory Tress his line and he looked at me in the wings and said, “What?” He got a huge laugh. But those sorts of flubs are rare. We’re amateurs, but we do take the Drama seriously. There was another night when a flat of scenery painted to indicate a drawing room in a Kentucky Bluegrass mansion started to teeter and was about to fall. I slipped onto the stage and grabbed it before it crushed the actors. Mazie never forgot that. She felt I had the stomach for directing. I never panicked. She thought that was one of the most important attributes in a director.
    Backstage at the Drama there is always a disorganized cacophony of kids running around, musical-instrument warm-ups, dancers doing their stretches, and actors running their lines. Tonight is closing night, the last show of our season. It’s a free performance for the families and friends of the cast and crew, so it’s standing room only. Nerves run high when we’re putting on the show for the town; somehow, performing for strangers is easier.
    The play is about a mountain girl named June Tolliver who falls in love with John Hale, a coal inspector from Kentucky. He takes this wildcat girl and sends her to the Bluegrass to be refined and educated by his aristocratic sister, Helen. When she returns to her mountains after having the Pygmalion pulled on her, she doesn’t fit in. In fact, she is too cultured for John Hale, who cannot believe what a lady she has become. They get past all that, though, and admit they’ve loved each other all along. It’s a classic story, and it gets the audience every single time. My favorite moment in the play is in the first act, when June’s father, Devil Judd Tolliver, finds out that John Hale is in love with his fifteen-year-old daughter. He tries to blow the coal inspector’s head off. The lines go:
    DEVIL JUDD: My Juney is too young for ye.
    JOHN HALE: She won’t always be fifteen, sir. I’ll wait.
    The actual blocking has been handed down for years, so all I do is say, “You go here,” “You stand there,” “Look surprised when the gun goes off,” and “No chewing gum.” I just follow the instructions from Mazie’s promptbook. (When she died she willed it to the John Fox, Jr., Museum.) Any of the special touches we owe to Mazie Dinsmore and her theatrical vision. She put actual gunfire into the show and added the preshow of roving bluegrass musicians and singers to entertain the audience before curtain. The preshow has set us apart from all the other outdoor dramas on the circuit. Audiences love the traditional bluegrass music, and of course, they can’t wait to see our world-famous backdrop: a painting, the size of half a football field, that is an exact replica of the mountain view you see behind it. It’s a dazzler at twilight, when you’re sitting in the audience and you see a painting of the actual vista from your seat.
    The hardest part of directing is the scheduling. Because we are not