Tom and Huck roll musically into town A tighter budget is having an impact on some of East Carolina’s summer performing arts programs. The main example: the ECU/Loessin Summer Theatre series will produce only one play, Big River, a musical adapted from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. With music and lyrics by the late Roger Miller, Big River is a Tony Award-winning retelling of the story of Huck Finn and the runaway slave Jim as they raft along the Mississippi River. Miller’s score combines elements of country music, jazz and gospel styling. The production, scheduled June 16–27, marks a return to the familiar setting of McGinnis Theatre, now that renovation work on the fly system, sound system and exterior landscaping to the Art Deco building have been completed. Summer Theatre staged three plays in the Turnage Theater in Washington last year while the renovations to McGinnis proceded. Big River will run for 12 performances, which is more than the usual summer play, with 8 p.m. shows on all dates except June 21 and June 22 (dark). Two shows will be staged June 20 and June 27 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Let’s go to camp! Summer is the time for camps of all kinds on campus. While most are for teenagers, some attract people of all ages, like the annual summer guitar workshop. Go to the School of Music’s web site, www.ecu.edu/music, for more information about: Drama Camp: ECU’s annual summer drama camp, which runs this year from July 27–Aug. 1, is open to young people ages 7–10, 11–13 and 14–18. Participants receive training in beginning acting and performance techniques. Guitar Workshop: Running from July 11–14, the annual summer guitar workshop is open to students of all levels who want to improve their skills on the classical guitar. Band Camp: The June 14–19 band camp is an annual program designed for musicians in grades six through 12. Participants have opportunities for instruction in full concert band, small ensemble and solo performing. Choral Conducting Institute: The institute, set for June 21–26, is a weeklong program for those interested in developing their skills as artists, musicians and choral leaders. Participants attend seminars and master classes on conducting and take part in ensemble singing.

Pirate life, Blackbeard style

If you find yourself in Raleigh this summer and have a free hour, be sure to drop by the N.C. Museum of History and take in “Knights of the Black Flag,” an impressive exhibit that contrasts the brutal realities of the violent life that Pirates lived with romanticized images of swashbuckling adventurers prevalent in popular culture.

Interactive displays trace pirating all the way back to ancient Egypt but the more impressive items are from the classical age of pirating in the late 1700s when Stede Bonnet, Anne Bonny, Mary Read and the most famous pirate of all—Blackbeard—prowled the North Carolina coast.


A rail gun and shot retrieved from the shipwreck believed to be the Queen Anne's Revenge


An ironcage used for punishment. Bottom, a typical pirate meal.

The exhibit boasts the largest collection of artifacts ever displayed from the shipwreck believed to be Blackbeard’s flagship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge. Most of these items were recovered over the last five years by East Carolina researchers and preserved at the Queen Anne’s Revenge Conservation Lab on the West Research Campus. The preservation effort is a joint project by ECU and the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.

Hundreds of artifacts, including cannons, a ship’s bell and gold dust, are on display from the Queen Anne’s Revenge, which ran aground in Beaufort Inlet in 1718 and was discovered in 1996.

Videos accompanying the exhibit show underwater archaeologists at the shipwreck site working to conserve one of the largest pirate ships ever to sail the Spanish Main. Also on display are items discovered in the ruins of Blackbeard’s purported house in Bath.

Legends surround another compelling artifact in the exhibit: the alleged skull of Blackbeard, which is on loan from the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass.

The exhibit allows young visitors to step inside a pirate’s life, to handle pirate weapons, to capture ships and try on pirate clothes. They can watch for pirates from the crow’s nest, defend their ship from a pirate attack, and experience firsthand what it was like to be a pirate.

The History Museum exhibit essentially is the traveling road show version of one mounted by the N.C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort. Behind both exhibits is Mike Carraway BFA ’78 (above right), who is the Maritime Museum’s exhibit designer and an expert on all things Blackbeard.

The exhibit will be on view through the end of the year. The History Museum, located on Jones Street in downtown Raleigh. is open Monday through Saturday, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m., and Sundays from noon–5:00 p.m. Admission is $5, $4 for seniors; children are free.