Summer Showtime

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All the world may be a stage, but all the stages of the world are hardly the same. In the town of Danville, there is a venue that harkens back to a time when summer brought eager actors, talented directors and stage artists together in a warm-weather delight known as summer stock theater. These diehards dedicated their dog days to honing their craft in performances that kept the locals coming back season after season. The folks of central Kentucky still do. 

The Pioneer Playhouse Outdoor Theatre & Campground in Danville has been training actors and producing plays for 70 seasons. In its first couple of decades, it garnered the title “King of Summer Stocks” among the theater community. The impetus behind this creative endeavor was the late Eben C. Henson, a Kentucky Colonel and Danville native who had a penchant for stage acting and a knack for making things work. 

“Our dad was crazy,” Pioneer Playhouse founding family member and managing director Heather Henson said with a laugh. 

“He had an idea to start a theater in Kentucky because he was a dreamer,” added Robby Henson, Heather’s brother and the artistic director for Pioneer Playhouse. “He grew up in Danville, but after World War II, he’d gone to an acting program in New York City at the New School, and he got the bug. When he decided to come back from New York to Danville, he wanted to bring a lot of his colleagues and friends and the whole New York theater vibe to Danville. That was 1950.”

That year, Colonel Henson finagled a deal to rent an abandoned USO theater on the grounds of Darnell Hospital—now Kentucky State Hospital—in return for donating 20 percent of the profits for candy, cigarettes and books for the patients. For the next several years, performances took place there, while the seeds of Henson’s own stock theater were sprouting. Doing all the work himself, Henson often bartered for goods and equipment and became, as his kids put it, “the first recycler.” 

“He would give a bottle ofwhiskey if somebody would bring out old factory beams, and he would create buildings out of factory beams and girders,” Robby said. 

“That was the only way,” Heather said. “He didn’t have any money, so he would go to a construction site and say, ‘Hey, you’re tearing that down. Can I have that?’ and before they could say yes or no, he would take it. And when you walk through, everything you see is hand built by our father.”

The terraced outdoor theater is flanked by dorm rooms that house the actors for the season. Walk through the “Indian Room” and across an open-air courtyard and you’re in the Shelter House, which is used as a dance floor and indoor theater. (Summer theater means summer weather; the fickle Kentucky version occasionally sends actors and audience members scurrying for cover mid-performance.) 

A 19th century village constructed of parts of local buildings offers visitors a lovely walk through the past. Early bullet-proof glass in “The Bank,” an 1880s printing press in the “Danville Mirror” newspaper office, and various storefronts plucked from renovation projects in downtown Danville add authenticity to the setting.  

Serving as the box office is one of Pioneer Playhouse’s most famous structures, the train depot from the 1956 Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift film, Raintree County, which was shot in part in Danville and in which Heather and Robby’s mother, Charlotte, was an extra. After their beginnings at Darnell Hospital, Henson’s productions had moved to a pasture on the current site, and once the film wrapped, he saw an opportunity to take his theater in a new direction. 

“After Raintree County, he saw that he could repurpose this train station set,” Robby said. “He started building the complex around it.” Fortunately for Henson, summer stock theater was enjoying immense popularity in America, and actors were signing up in droves. 

“At that time, summer stock theater was the cool new thing to do,” said Heather. “A lot of people were starting it in different states … in the ’50s and ’60s, this was kind of the ‘King Daddy’ of summer stock theater. New York actors would come to the wilds of Kentucky and be like, ‘What is this?’ ” 

They soon discovered it was the perfect venue for mastering their craft. “Dad had the idea in the beginning to have a place where actors could come and learn how to be actors, learn how to be directors, learn how to make a set and create a stage,” Heather said. “So for years, it was ‘The Pioneer School of Drama,’ which we still are.” 

Charlotte Henson, the backbone of the family who was an indispensable partner to the Colonel, still cooks three meals a day—announcing each with the ringing of an antique bell—for the 30-plus residents who are accepted each year into Pioneer Playhouse’s summer program. 

Several of those early players at the theater became well-known performers. Everyone’s favorite Bionic Man, Lee Majors, was one, as well as John Travolta, and character actors Bo Hopkins (The Last Picture Show and Dynasty), George Loros (The Rockford Files and various television roles) and Lexington native Jim Varney of the Ernest movies and TV commercials. Travolta was a teenage intern at the Playhouse and had a small role in a play Henson wrote about legendary Kentucky physician Ephraim McDowell. Many years later, in a letter, Travolta quoted his line from the play, “Yes, Margaret Miller was suffering from pyloric stenosis and at the time of the operation, I had no chance of success!” and the Colonel responded, “And it was exactly right … It was the line from my play! John had remembered it after all those years … It must’ve meant something to him.”

It also meant something to the Henson kids, a creative bunch who all took turns playing a part in that play when they were young. Their own endeavors took them away from home and back again, as their passion for theater and the call to continue their dad’s legacy never dimmed. 

“Both Heather and myself pursued other careers for a while, in other places,” Robby said. “I did five feature films that I directed for major studios, and Heather has had more books than that.” 

“I went into publishing and was an editor at HarperCollins,” Heather said, “and then into writing children’s books.” An award-winning author, she was a semifinalist for the prestigious Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award in 2017, with her work The Whole Sky being the only young adult book considered. Their sister Holly, who passed away in 2012, was the executive artistic director for the Playhouse as well as an actor and comedienne. 

Robby was the winner of the Student Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Award while he was a student at New York University’s graduate school. Later, his film Pharaoh’s Army, starring Chris Cooper, Patricia Clarkson and Kris Kristofferson, was shown on PBS. Robby was both writer and director for The Badge, a crime drama starring Billy Bob Thornton, Patricia Arquette, Thomas Hayden Church and Sela Ward, which was released through Starz Pictures and Lions Gate Films. It won Best Drama at the Breckenridge Film Festival and Best Feature Film at the Texas Film Festival, and was nominated for a GLAAD Award. Robby helped found Voices Inside, a playwriting program for prison inmates funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and he continues to direct at the Playhouse. 

“All of us pursued creative careers,” Heather said. “And I think that’s because we grew up here in this magical theater setting, and our parents always encouraged us to do what we wanted to do.”

This summer, audiences will enjoy the usual round of smart, funny productions such as Kong’s Night Out, Sherlock Holmes and the Ice Palace Murders, and the two-actor wonder Red, White and Tuna. The Playhouse’s Kentucky Voices productions are big fan favorites, and this year’s Breaking Up With Elvis promises to continue that tradition. The King’s sudden death led to the cancellation of his 1977 show at Rupp Arena, and anyone who still has a ticket from the “ghost concert” can bring it to the Pioneer Playhouse box office for a 50 percent discount on that performance. 

In August, famed comedienne Etta May will return for two nights, delighting fans with her “Southern Fried Chicks”-inspired humor. Theatergoers can enjoy a delicious dinner of hickory smoked pulled pork or chicken, cornbread, potatoes, coleslaw, local vegetables and cobbler for dessert. Iced tea and lemonade are included, with alcoholic beverages available for purchase. 

The passion, talent and graciousness of Pioneer Playhouse’s Henson family shines through in every aspect of the productions, and their carefully crafted setting is a joy in itself. 

“You can come early; you can wander around; you can have dinner at 7:30, a home-cooked meal, and a show at 8:30,” Heather said. “People do, and they fall in love.” 

The 2019 Summer Lineup

Kong’s Night Out 

By Jack Neary 

June 7-June 22

Sherlock Holmes and the Ice Palace Murders

By Jeffrey Hatcher, based on the novel by Larry Millett

June 25-July 6 (closed July 4)

Breaking Up With Elvis

By Robby Henson

July 9-July 20

Not Now, Darling

By Ray Cooney and John Chapman

July 23-Aug. 3

Red, White and Tuna

By Ed Howard, Joe Searsand Jaston Williams

Aug. 6-Aug. 17

Etta May

Aug. 23-24