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Fall 1991

Champoeg Newsletter a

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Memberships/Donations
Fuel Friends Activities

Recent donations to the Friends of Historic Champoeg
include gifts from Leighton Whitsett of an iron kettle
and 15 gallons of ice cream from Alpenrose Dairy,
both for the recent Indian Summer Festival.

Individual Member - $10+
Ardis LeFebvre
Jan Mullaney

Family Member - $25+ |
Betty & Gene Comfort
Charles G. Davis, Jr.

Mr. & Mrs. Paul Kuhns, Jr.

Contributor - $50+
Krohn's Appliance Center
The Walking Connection

Patron - $100+
Serge & Nola Coval

Room & Board $1/Day

Clean, comfortable room in friendly household.
Three home-cooked meals daily. You're one of the
family. Sorry, this isn't a real classified ad. But
we wish that it were. If you have a home or
apartment close to Champoeg and you would be
willing to give room and board to one of our
pageant actors during June and July, please phone
678-1649.

Champoeg One of Dozen

Friends of Historic Champoeg is one of twelve
cooperatives within the Oregon State Parks system. Each one is
unique in its focus, but all are alike in that they share a love for
their park and care for its heritage. The others:

Banks Vernonia Linear Parkway
Cape Blanco (North Bend)
ae Meares Lighthouse & Wildlife Refuge
(Oceanside)

Collier (Klamath Falls)
Elijah Bristow (Dexter to Eugene)

Old Fort Stevens
Shore Acres (North Bend)
Silver Falls
Tryon Creek (Portland)
Vista House (Corbet)
Yaquina Bay (South Beach)

Institute of Outdoor Drama

by Martha Maclver

Lessons Learned At
My Old Kentucky Home

I've just returned from a dynamite conference. When 75
managers and directors of outdoor drama get together there's only
one topic of conversation from first cup of coffee in the moming
until midnight: pageants, pageants, pageants.

7 The conference was conducted by .the Institute of
Outdoor Drama, of which Champoeg is a member, and it was

hosted with genuine southern hospitality by the Stephen Foster

Drama Association, in Bardstown, Kentucky.

I felt a little like a freshman on campus. Not only was
this my first outdoor drama conference, but Champoeg is one of
the "baby" pageants. We're just ten years old and our attendance
is modest. [By comparison, Ramona Pageant in Califomia has
been around since 1923, and Texas! has an annual attendance in
excess of 100,000!] But it was wonderful how all those veterans
took this freshman under their wings, sharing their best ideas and
offering welcome advice.

The Paul Green Seminar in Theatre Production:
Marketing Texas-Style, which was just one of the sessions in
the four-day conference, was a step-by-step plan for promoting
outdoor dramas. It was presented by the promotions team from
Canyon, Texas. According to these experts, there are some
things that we are doing just right, and some things that we are
doing very wrong.

As a result of this workshop, two managerial changes
I'll institute at Champoeg for the 1992 season will be an
emphasis on marketing about a day's drive from Champoeg so
that we will be reaching tourists when they still have time to
change their plans and come to the pageant, and we will begin
taking telephone reservations so that people will know in
advance that they have guarantecd seating.

This is also the year we can move up to a four-color
souvenir program. Fair warning to local businesses: we'll be out
selling ads after the new year!

Another of the sessions which stands out from the
conference was one conducted by playwright/composer Billy Edd
Wheeler. He walked us through the composition of a song from
his musical play Young Abe Lincoln, beginning with the "idea"
and then developing a melody, lyrics ??~and musical arrangement.
Because he had taped some of his working sessions, we could
actually hear the development of the song. |

This is really just a tiny bit of what I learned. I hope
that you'll be able to see the evidence of that learning in some
exciting and successful changes at Champoeg.

' - While in Kentucky I spent one day visiting every
historic site in driving distance, trying to pick up additional ideas
for historic interpretation that we can apply. And by the way, .

_ there really is a "My Old Kentucky Home." It was once the _

home of a second cousin of Stephen Foster and he wrote that
famous song after visiting there. The home and its grounds are
now part of the Kentucky State Park system and it is the
showplace for the Stephen Foster Story outdoor musical drama.

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