|
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 Raleigh,”
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 |
