Pioneer Playhouse

The Pioneer Playhouse is an outdoor theater located in Danville, Kentucky. Founded in 1950, it is the oldest outdoor theater in the state. Past performers of note have included John Travolta, Lee Majors, Bo Hopkins, and Jim Varney. The outdoor theater movement in Kentucy theater began with the Pioneer Playhouse. According to the official site, the founder "built the theatre by acquiring many of the construction materials in unorthodox ways. He once bartered a fifth of whiskey for hand-hewn two hundred-year-old rafter beams and hired prisoners from the local county jail to help him lay the first foundations."

Related Topics:
Theater - Danville, Kentucky - 1950 - John Travolta - Lee Majors - Bo Hopkins - Jim Varney - Kentucy theater

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The founder, "Colonel" Eben Henson, lost a civil rights lawsuit in 1978 over his refusal to hire black performers to work at the theater. After an all-white version of "A Raisin in the Sun" premiered (with a much different ending in which the family happily returned to Africa), the NAACP and ACLU filed a joint lawsuit, calling the theater "the most egregious example of Jim Crow still in existence." After losing the lawsuit, Henson told the Lexington Star-Tribune that he would "never produce a play with a Negro character again."

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Source: Lexingtion Star Tribune, "Jury find Danville Theater Violates Civil Rights of Performers," March 17, 1978.

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