A three-second video captured the essence of Rex Stephenson’s love for theater that appeals to and involves casts of all ages.
As schoolchildren learned a dance as part of a workshop, Stephenson clapped along with the music, shouting encouragement. “The look on his face, the joy on his face — as tough as he was, and as much as he held himself to a really high standard, and took things very seriously, he was also really joyful,” said Emily Blankenship-Tucker, director of Appalachian Music at Ferrum College and music coordinator for Blue Ridge Dinner Theatre.
Stephenson, whose artistic footprint includes the founding of Blue Ridge Dinner Theatre and the Jack Tale Players, as well as a celebrated one-man show in which he portrayed Mark Twain, died Aug. 13 at age 81 after a long illness. His legacy at Ferrum College continues with plays performed in a theater that now bears his name.
“Rex was that very rare combination of traditionalist and innovator,” wrote Danny Adams, Assistant Director of Library and Archive Services for Ferrum College. “First, he brought traditional Appalachian culture — through the Jack Tales as well as countless plays — to young audiences in fresh ways.
“But Rex also wanted to make sure that we had the best of more modern works too, especially when it came to music. People knew Rex well enough to know that if he was the one putting on the production, it was going to be good,” Adams wrote.
Born in 1943 on a farm in Muncie, Indiana, Stephenson showed interest in theater at an early age — in fourth grade, he wrote a script for a puppet show. “His mother said she knew then he was interested in drama,” said Tina Hanlon, an English teacher at Ferrum who described herself as the “self-appointed archivist and bibliographer” of Blue Ridge Dinner Theatre and the Jack Tale Players.
Stephenson pursued degrees in history and theater, joining the Ferrum College faculty to teach drama in 1973. He soon began his first lifelong endeavor: adopting Appalachian folktales about a country boy named Jack and his magical adventures, even consulting with Richard Chase, the North Carolina-based folklorist who combined the authoritative Jack Tales compendium.
The first performance by the Jack Tale Players took place on Dec. 11, 1975, at Callaway Elementary School in Franklin County. From those humble beginnings grew a project and a company that will celebrate its 50th anniversary from Oct. 10-12 in Ferrum College’s Sale Theatre.
“Generations of schoolchildren have seen the Jack Tale Players,” said Blankenship-Tucker. “Often we run into adults who say, ‘Oh, I, you know, saw the Jack Tale Players when I was a kid,’ or ‘I wanted to grow up and play music or be in the theater because I saw that work.’”
Stephenson took the Jack Tale Players on tours, performing in England and three dozen states. “Nationally and internationally, Rex is on the list of theater artists, playwrights and directors who have really played formative parts in developing theater for children, educational theater for young audiences,” Blankenship-Tucker said.
Hanlon noted that Nellie McCaslin, a national pioneer in children’s educational theater, mentored Stephenson and cited his work with the Jack Tale Players in her textbooks.
His ventures did not stop there. His career as an author of more than 25 full-length plays launched hand in hand with his founding of the Blue Ridge Dinner Theatre at Ferrum College. The first play the theater performed in the late 1970s was one Stephenson wrote himself, “Too Free for Me,” dramatizing the remarkable story of Indiana Choice, a Black woman who, prior to the Civil War, went to court in Franklin County to dispute a white man’s claim that she was his slave. With eventual “Lost Cause” advocate Jubal Early as her lawyer, in front of an all-white jury, she won her case.
He told the Roanoke Times in 1997 that it took many tries to find a publisher because many to whom he submitted the play did not believe its events were true. “The play had to wait for people to catch up with it.”
His other plays included adaptations of historical events, classical literature, and even musicals, the latter done in collaboration with Blankenship-Tucker, who came to Ferrum to join the Jack Tale Players and Blue Ridge Dinner Theatre companies in 2001. His adaptations of Appalachian folk tales expanded to those with female heroes, “such as ‘Ashpet,’ ‘Catskins,’ and my favorite, ‘Mutsmag,’ about a spunky girl who defeats a giant and a witch,” Hanlon said.
One of Stephenson’s innovations involved using intergenerational casts, Hanlon said, rather than using all children or all adults, an approach that won praise from mentor McCaslin.
In 2012, Stephenson and his longtime partner in operating the theater, Ferrum English professor Jody Brown, both retired, and Blue Ridge Dinner Theatre shut down, though all involved would have preferred that it continued. At the time, the future of the Jack Tale Players seemed uncertain, but that soon changed. “He continued to tell Jack Tales and to perform, so the company continued — even in sort of modified circumstances during the pandemic,” Blankenship-Tucker said.
Stephenson also created and toured one-man shows, the best known being his portrayal of Mark Twain. Embodying the writer and humorist at age 72, Stephenson would tell stories from Twain’s youth and utter Twainian zingers such as, “If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.”
On March 15, 2023, Stephenson performed as Mark Twain at Ferrum for the final time. “I said to somebody, we’re never going to be able to see a picture of Mark Twain again without crying now,” Hanlon said.
Stephenson lived to see his legacy at Ferrum cemented. The year of his last Mark Twain performance, the college dedicated the Rex Stephenson Theatre in Schoolfield Hall and opened an archive dedicated to his accomplishments and the plays and performances he made possible. That summer saw the revival of the Blue Ridge Dinner Theatre, run by Blankenship-Tucker, her wife Rachel Blankenship-Tucker and Ferrum theater arts professor Rebecca Crocker.
“He was part of a community of theater makers who really have elevated the values and the work of making theater for young audiences, making that accessible,” Emily Blankenship-Tucker said. “There are folks doing that all over the world who learned from Rex.”
Stephenson is survived by his brother, his three daughters, and two grandchildren. On Saturday, Aug. 23, Ferrum College will hold a celebration of Stephenson’s life, with visitation at 10 a.m. and service at 11 a.m. in Vaughn Chapel. Donations can be made to the Ferrum College Music and Theatre Department.