Contact: Wanda Lassiter Email: wanda.lassiter@dncr.nc.gov
Opens at the Museum of the Albemarle
ELIZABETH CITY, NC – The Museum of the Albemarle will open its newest small case exhibition on April 1, featuring artifacts related to the James Adams Floating Theatre. In 1925 Pulitzer Prize winner Edna Ferber visited the grand vessel while it was docked in North Carolina. Her interviews and research there would become a key foundation for her award-winning book “Show Boat,”a best-selling novel about Mississippi steamboats, love, racial prejudice, and adventure. Her novel later inspired plays, musicals, movies, and songs.
Ferber once wrote, “Innocence wore golden curls. Wickedness wore black. Love triumphed, right conquered, virtue was rewarded, evil punished. Here were blood, lust, love, passion. Here were warmth, enchantment, laughter, music. . . . It was Escape. It was the Theatre.”
Launched in 1914 from Washington, N.C., the traveling vaudeville showboat entertained ticketholders in communities along rivers and sounds from New Jersey to Florida. Northeastern North Carolina towns—such as Bath, Manteo, Colerain, and Elizabeth City—were entertained with live plays, music, ventriloquism, acrobatics, and magic performances up to six nights a week.
In the early years, up to 850 guests could enjoy the shows. That number decreased to 442 in 1940 due to renovations. After several sinkings due to the weather or striking submerged objects, the showboat burned and sank one final time in Georgia in 1941.
This exhibit features a trunk used by repertoire actor and drummer Raymond Coopersmith, a typewriter and top hat worn by writer and director Charlie Hunter, programs, a theatre cash box, and show tickets. The exhibition, which runs for a year, is free and open to the public.
About the Museum of the Albemarle
The Museum of the Albemarle is located at 501 S. Water Street, Elizabeth City, NC. (252) 335-1453. www.museumofthealbemarle.com. Find us on Facebook! The hours are Monday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Closed Sundays and State Holidays. Serving Bertie, Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Dare, Gates, Hertford, Hyde, Northampton, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Tyrrell, and Washington Counties, the museum is the northeast regional history museum of the North Carolina Division of State History Museums within the N.C.
Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, the state agency with the mission to enrich lives and communities and the vision to harness the state’s cultural resources to build North Carolina’s social, cultural, and economic future. Information is available 24/7 at www.dncr.nc.gov.
About the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources
The N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (DNCR) manages, promotes, and enhances the things that people love about North Carolina – its diverse arts and culture, rich history, and spectacular natural areas. Through its programs, the department enhances education, stimulates economic development, improves public health, expands accessibility, and strengthens community resiliency.
The department manages over 100 locations across the state, including 27 historic sites, seven history museums, two art museums, five science museums, four aquariums, 35 state parks, four recreation areas, dozens of state trails and natural areas, the North Carolina Zoo, the North Carolina Symphony, the State Library, the State Archives, the N.C. Arts Council, the African American Heritage Commission, the American Indian Heritage Commission, the State Historic Preservation Office, the Office of State Archaeology, the Highway Historical Markers program, the N.C. Land and Water Fund, and the Natural Heritage Program. For more information, please visit www.dncr.nc.gov.
