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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 5, 1993                   TAG: 9302050091
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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OFF-OFF FERRUM

When a Broadway producer wants to know whether his newest show is working, he takes it on the road.

Hartford, Conn., and Philadelphia are just two cities where many a production has been fine-tuned before opening night, or canceled altogether.

Rex Stephenson, the theater professor at Ferrum College in Franklin County, gets as antsy as any New York theater kingpin before his productions open, and he stays almost as busy.

At the moment, he is developing plays about a World War II ship, about Booker T. Washington and about the workings of the American economy, as well as the activities of the Jack Tale Players, the storytelling troupe he founded and has taken to New York, Los Angeles and New Orleans, among other hot spots.

In January, while serving as artist-in-residence at Oak Grove Elementary School in Roanoke County, Stephenson was asked where he takes his works for their out-of-town polishings - what place, in other words, serves as Hartford for the actors from tiny Ferrum?

"We usually go to Floyd County," Stephenson said. Check Elementary School has been particularly good.

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