Under the leadership of President Franklin D. Roosevelt numerous government programs were devised to ease the burdens of this "Great Depression", but recovery would require not only jobs but a new hopeful attitude among the citizenry. At last, toward the end of the 1930s, some of the government's policies began to take effect. The future started to look a little less grim. American business was slowly being revitalized; the American people re-energized.

"The Lost Colony", written by North Carolina Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Green, grew out of this renewal. The idea for the play emerged from Roanoke Island's joy in commemorating its 16th Century roots. In Green's skillful hands, it culminated in a dramatic, music-filled celebration of hopes and dreams at a time when Americans truly needed them. The theatre itself, located at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, was built as a project of Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration. Many of the first actors and technicians were members of the Civilian Conservation Corps or various artists' projects.

The play is loosely based on Sir Walter Raleigh's attempt to establish a permanent English colony in the New World. In 1587 he sent about 115 men, women, and children to "Verginia". Roanoke Island, where the colonists landed, was not Raleigh's first choice as a permanent settlement site. It is still unclear why they did not continue on to the Chesapeake Bay area as originally planned.

Raleigh selected John White, a London cartographer and artist, as governor of the colony. With him were his daughter Eleanor, and her husband Ananias Dare. Eight other men, who probably had financial investments in the venture, were appointed as assistants to White. The remainder of the group were farmers, artisans, servants, at least one college professor and alas, a couple of ex-thieves. There were no titled noblemen. Ananias Dare himself was probably a brick mason. It was a collection fairly representative of lower and middle class English society.

With the exception of John White all of these colonists disappeared without a trace. Among them was White's granddaughter, Virginia Dare, the first English child born in America. What remains of the 1587 lost colony is legend, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, and Paul Green's splendid play, now in its 62^nd production year.

Green integrated history, legend, and imagination to create a new medium, the outdoor symphonic drama. To the depression-weary audiences of the late thirties, "The Lost Colony" represented their own journey through hardship. The unknown was still ahead but perhaps the worst was over.

The playwright knew his audience, and gave them stock theatrical characters that they could easily recognize. He dealt them historical conflict and hardship but he also provided a beautiful heroine, Eleanor Dare; an "all- American" hero, John Borden; and a dastardly foreign villain in the character of ship's pilot Simon Fernando. Fernando, a historical figure, was made to represent American anxiety about foreign influences and intentions. The Great War was still a very fresh memory and already in 1937 vague rumbles of impending conflict were rolling out of Europe. The possibility of violent confrontation between the heroic figure of John Borden and the wicked Fernando was entirely realistic. Borden himself, a real but largely unknown member of the original 1587 lost colony, easily becomes the playwright's hymn to the common man.

Green converts another historic character, Ananias Dare, from a skilled workman into a foppish, haughty "gentleman", almost a caricature of American distaste for pretension and class distinctions. The inference was clear and appealing: John Borden is "us" and Simon and Ananias are "them", and "us" comes out on top. The tipsy reprobate "old Tom" represents the classic down-and-outer with a heart of gold who rediscovers his own long-buried decency. Agona, the bane and light of Tom's life, appears as the requisite comic sidekick. Green even suggests that the forbidden love affair between hero and heroine could end happily. Instead of leaving his audience with the bitter taste of tragedy, he created the poignant "Final March" toward a new beginning.

Americans today are inundated, perhaps overwhelmed, with the intricacies of technology, extremes in art and music and the complexities of everyday living. "The Lost Colony" is of another time, but the philosophy and the characters are familiar. We still admire courage and hard work; we look forward to greater achievement and we still need to laugh at the comic sidekick. We still cling passionately to hopes and dreams. The terrors of the Great Depression are ancient history but "The Lost Colony" can be good medicine for a case of the millennium mullygrumps!