<< Back 11/20/02 Carden play to be produced throughout WNC SMN In addition to humanities project performances, which are sponsored by the Fontana Regional Library in Bryson City, “Birdell” is currently in production with the Kudzu Players in Sylva. “Birdell” will run for three performances at the Kudzu Theatre at 7:30 p.m., Nov. 21-23 in the old Jackson County Courthouse in Sylva. Tickets are $5 for adults and $4 for senior citizens. Advance reservations may be made by contacting the Jackson County Library. Tickets will also be available at the door. The play will also be shown at the SoHo Grill and Racquet Club in Cullowhee as part of a dinner theater on Nov. 20. Dinner is from 5-7:30 p.m. and the play begins at 7:30 p.m. Reservations required at Soho and can be made by calling 828.293.9288. “Birdell,” a play by Sylva playwright and author Gary Carden, has been selected as a “humanities project” by the North Carolina Humanities Council. As a result of this selection, the play will be produced in about 10 Western North Carolina libraries next spring. Following each performance, a dialogue will be initiated between two noted humanist scholars and the audience regarding the historical background of the play. “Birdell,” like most of Carden’s work, is grounded in regional history. “I love to listen to people talk,” said Carden. “Now that I am severely hearing impaired, I’m having to depend more and more on memory. The 86-year-old protagonist in ‘Birdell’ owes the major events in her life to a dozen or so people I have heard talk about their lives sometime in the past 60 years.” This time out, Carden said, the background is Hazel Creek, a section of western North Carolina that is rich with drama — the coming of the lumber camps and the creation of a half-dozen towns that no longer exist. The remains of many of them — Proctor, Bushnell, Japan — are either vanquished ruins or abandoned relics on the bottom of Fontana Lake. “There are people still living in western North Carolina that can tell you about the destruction of the vast forests in the Hazel Creek area and in north Georgia,” Carden said. “Later, many experienced the building of Fontana Dam and had relatives who were forced to move from their homes by TVA and the rising waters.” “Birdell” depicts the life of a mountain woman who saw the forests depleted while she raised a family. Later, when she resisted TVA’s efforts to “relocate” her, she watched water moccasins swim through her bedroom “and out the kitchen door.” Birdell is not a passive character either. She is rambunctous, out-spoken, humorous, “earthy” and enduring, Carden said. “For me, this old lady is the essence of all that is good about mountain character,” said Carden. “She is resilient, stubborn and abiding. In the play, she gives the audience some advice about life: ‘Love it fierce while ye have it, ‘cause sooner or later, ye will lose it.’”