By Orla Swift, Staff Writer
MANTEO - A fire ripped through the theater that hosts "The Lost Colony" outdoor drama early this morning, destroying two buildings and hundreds of costumes and artifacts.
The amphitheater and its sets were saved. But the costume shop yards away was destroyed, including 70 years of costumes, fabrics, sketches and other artifacts and memorabilia.
A nearby resident saw flames at the Waterside Theatre at 12:35 a.m. and alerted firefighters, according to the show's publicist.
The cause of the fire has not been determined, but it appears to have started in a maintenance shed, according to production and costume designer William Ivey Long.
Many valuable costumes were saved by chance, Long said in a telephone interview this morning from his home in New York. The ornate queen's costume and jewels had just gone to Wilmington's Cameron Art Museum about a week ago, to be part of a retrospective of Long's work.
And the courtiers' costumes are at the dry cleaners and in Raleigh, where they will be included in the N.C. Museum of History's forthcoming exhibit, "Mysteries of the Lost Colony and A New World: England's First View of America from the British Museum."
The amphitheater and its sets were saved. But the costume shop yards away was destroyed, including 70 years of costumes, fabrics, sketches and other artifacts and memorabilia.
A nearby resident saw flames at the Waterside Theatre at 12:35 a.m. and alerted firefighters, according to the show's publicist.
The cause of the fire has not been determined, but it appears to have started in a maintenance shed, according to production and costume designer William Ivey Long.
Many valuable costumes were saved by chance, Long said in a telephone interview this morning from his home in New York. The ornate queen's costume and jewels had just gone to Wilmington's Cameron Art Museum about a week ago, to be part of a retrospective of Long's work.
And the courtiers' costumes are at the dry cleaners and in Raleigh, where they will be included in the N.C. Museum of History's forthcoming exhibit, "Mysteries of the Lost Colony and A New World: England's First View of America from the British Museum."
