SEA-GOING THEATRE

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 September 1927, Page 8

SEA-GOING THEATRE

AN AMERICAN NOVELTY.

A sea-going theatre is one of the many wonders of the United States.; Tlio James Adams Floating Theatre, which for the past twelve years has been a familiar institution along the coasts and waterways of Virginia and North Carolina, is the only deep-sea playhouse in North America; on the Mississippi there are a few floating places of entertainment, mostly niovte shows, but they do not go into the open sea as does the “Playhouse,” which is listed in the tonnage register al Washington among the unrigged merchant vessels. Mr. James Adams, owner of Ihe “Playhouse,” was originally a circus performer, and as part-owner of an intiiierant vaudeville show he accumulated a substantial fortune. In 1914 he grew tired of travelling to terra firma, and decided that it would be a pleasant change to start a floating theatre; so he ordered a special vessel to be built to suit his requirements. The enterprise proved extraordinarily successful, and the arrival of the “Playhouse” now ranks as a great event in the towns and villages along the coast which it frequents.

In the year's round a week each is allocated to thirty-five different places in the same order, and there is no need for any advance publicity as every town knows its turn is cpming, and the occasions are rare when all the 700 available seats are not taken. Two tugs haul the floating theatre from one place to another, and sometimes quite rough weather is encountered in Chesapeake Bay.

The plays given are described by the manager as “all about mother love, faithful and unfaithful sweethearts, the lamp in the window, an occasional villain, and mostly hilarity and fun.” Mr. Adams is no longer r.egujarly aboard his craft, but his brother acts as manager, of the enterprise, and his sister is chief actress. Her husband is the stage director, and these three with two other’ married couples who have been members of troupes for some years, make the company a firmly established and very happy family.