GREENSBORO -- Characters and themes in Triad Stage's new play, "Providence Gap," echo the artistic partnership of its creators, playwright Preston Lane and singer/songwriter Laurelyn Dossett.
Chance.
Luck.
Fortune.
Five years ago, Lane just happened to tune into BBC radio and hear the song "Leaving Eden," Dossett's lyrical story about the impact of textile mills closing.
By chance, Dossett had given Triad Stage some CDs by her roots band, Polecat Creek.
"In Laurelyn's music, I totally sensed someone who was doing musically what I hoped to do as a director and writer," Lane recalls.
"I thought, 'This is the voice I think can do what it is I want to try to do, with mixing music and plays.' "
Sparked by chance and luck, and sustained through creative collaboration, hard work and trust, Dossett and Lane have produced four plays for the downtown regional theater.
"Brother Wolf" and "Beautiful Star: An Appalachian Nativity" premiered in 2006, "Bloody Blackbeard" in 2008, and starting Sunday, "Providence Gap."
Their focus on the magic and music of Lane's Appalachian heritage inspired their nickname, "the Rodgers and Hammerstein of the Appalachian mountains."
"We aren't like married people -- we don't spend much time worrying about why our collaboration works," says Dossett, 49. "We just focus on the story."
In Dossett, "Preston has found a kindred spirit," says Richard Whittington, who co-founded Triad Stage with Lane.
"They both enjoy the art of storytelling -- he through his original plays and adaptations and she through her songwriting."
Unlike Rodgers and Hammerstein, Dossett and Lane don't write Broadway musicals in which glitzy show tunes replace dialogue. Rather, they craft a new form of American theater that combines story and music rooted in the region.
"We are not trying to do what was hot in New York last year or something that can move to New York next year," says Lane, 42. "We are trying to do theater here and now, for this community. We are alone in that, with very few exceptions around the country now."
Audiences like the result. Their three past plays rank among Triad Stage's six top-grossing shows. Other theaters have performed "Brother Wolf" and "Beautiful Star."
Two years in the making, "Providence Gap" is the final play of Triad Stage's ninth season. It's part of THTR 232, its annual summer festival with UNCG's theater department. Professional and student actors make up its 15-member cast.
They will be joined each night by Dossett and musicians Carl Jones and Scott Manring, performing 11 original songs composed by Dossett.
Set between 1894 and 1931, the story follows the main character, Chance, as he searches for Providence Gap. He was found there as a baby and longs to return.
He meets and marries Fortune, who gives birth to their daughter, Lucky. But luck and fortune change.
The action moves from the Appalachian Mountains, to the fictional Piedmont textile town of Hawboro, to France during World War I.
It ends in the Mexican border town of Piedras Negras, a symbolic border region between life and death.
"Like a great fairy tale, it starts with a gift and a curse, and it involves this epic journey toward a final magical resolution," Lane says.
* * * *
After hearing Dossett's music back in 2005, Lane approached her with a project in mind.
He would adapt "Beowulf," the epic poem about the adventures of a sixth-century Scandinavian warrior, into an Appalachian tale about "Brother Wolf." Would she write the music?
An award-winning songwriter and married mother of three, Dossett had never composed music for a play. She said yes.
"I assumed that he would write something and tell me what he needed, and I would obey," Dossett says, prompting laughter from both.
"I was pleasantly surprised that it was as clearly collaborative as it is."
One "Brother Wolf" ballad brought an unexpected reward. Levon Helm picked up "Anna Lee" for his Grammy Award-winning album, "Dirt Farmer."
The pair followed with "Beautiful Star: An Appalachian Nativity," Triad Stage's popular holiday show for four years.
They left mountain themes for the coast in 2008 with "Bloody Blackbeard," about the legendary pirate that North Carolina claims as its own.
But they longed to return to the mountains.
A scene in Shakespeare's "Pericles," when father and daughter recognize each other in a brothel, got Lane thinking: How would that scene play in a contemporary setting?
"The character of Chance took root in my mind, and from there, his story just unfolded," Lane said.
Other inspirations entered the mix.
His visits to Mexican towns, once known for powerful "border blaster" radio stations.
Family stories.
His desire to write roles for actors from past productions.
Dossett brought her own experiences. She recently had sung at the bedsides of her grandmother and a friend as they lay dying.
"Then we talked about birth and how that crossing is not all that different," Dossett says.
They talked. They traveled. They researched. They talked.
"I will talk about, 'What's going to happen next is that Chance is going to do this,' " Lane says. "Laurelyn will say, 'What does it mean? What's the theme? What are we trying to say?' I am very plot driven, and I think she is very theme driven."
When it came to writing, Lane went to the beach and to Laredo, Texas.
Dossett grabbed her guitar, banjo, script, notebooks and audio recorder and headed to a mountain cabin.
"Getting to the mountains really helped," Dossett said. "The images, the birds, the way the wind is -- those are all things that end up in the songs."
Dossett's songs perform multiple jobs: They set a time and place, advance the story, and elaborate on relationships, emotions and themes.
Her "Lady of the Mountain" becomes the play's first and repeated theme, featuring clawhammer banjo, fiddle and Dossett's lyrical voice.
"In the beginning in the mountains, it's the old ballad sound, pre-radio, that sound that came over from Europe with the early Scotch-Irish settlers and hasn't been commercialized," Dossett says.
"Then we move down the mountain and that kind of Appalachian music gets mixed with the Piedmont sounds. There's a little swing, a little blues, a little bluegrass and different influences that are ... the soup of our traditional music in this area."
Those influences show up in the textile mill recruiter's song, "Uncle Cotton."
The sounds of two mountain whippoorwills singing to each other inspired "Remember You Calling."
In 2009, Lane and Dossett took an early staged reading of "Providence Gap" to An Appalachian Summer Festival.
Several drafts later, it's time to share with audiences the play that they have come to love.
"I am so proud of the way it is shaping up," Lane says, "and already feeling a bit of sorrow of having to let it go."
Contact Dawn DeCwikiel-Kane at 373-5204 or dawn.kane@news-record.com
