Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 10, 1994 TAG: 9407140020
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LEXINGTON LENGTH: Long
The artistic director, co-founder - some would say heart and soul - of Lexington's unique outdoor theater, Baker left following disagreements with Lime Kiln's managing director, Ken Sheck, and its board of directors, several sources said.
He has made a living since as an actor and director, and has a string of television and movie appearances to his credit, including an upcoming Steve Martin release.
He has not made his peace.
``It saddened me,'' Baker said recently from Hiawassee, Ga., where he is directing and acting in a play this summer. ``Leaving without feeling like I had any connection, leaving on a rancorous note. That [Lime Kiln] was my life for 10 years. It would be nice if, after all that work and effort, I had a fuzzy feeling about it. But it's not that way.''
Baker left in January 1993 for reasons not publicly disclosed, but involving the theater's constant red ink, sources close to Lime Kiln said.
Several people interviewed for this article credited Baker with bringing quality theater to an improbable setting - but added he never learned to work within a budget.
Lime Kiln deficits often had to be underwritten by generous theater patrons under Baker's tenure, said the chairman of Lime Kiln's board, Bob Martis.
By the time Baker left, the theater had a cumulative deficit in its operating budget of more than $100,000, and was faced with closing its doors, said Sheck, the managing director brought on board in 1992.
``Don and I had some real battles,'' said Sheck, brought in by the board to help put the organization on a sounder financial footing. ``We had reached a point where we were going to have to be very very good to survive. We had borrowed everything we could.''
Baker said money ``is always a problem. I know what a hard effort it is to keep things going and keep things afloat. You're always going to have disagreements about what can be done and how to make that happen.''
But he said that wasn't why he left.
``No I don't really think it was money. I think it was a matter of trust and respect,'' Baker said. ``I didn't see a lot of it. The powers that be were not happy. And I was not happy. It could have been just time to go. I am probably, always have been, better at being a pioneer than a politician. It's easier for me to start things than to maintain them.''
Critics and fans alike credit Baker with grafting his artistic vision onto a jumble of vines and rocks, and creating Lime Kiln's unusual blend of Shakespeare, offbeat concerts and original theater.
``I still have an incredible amount of respect for Don as an artist,'' said Barry Mines, Lime Kiln's current artistic director, who worked here with Baker. ``I was very bitter at many people that Don may have felt he had to leave. But that's in the past. We're here now, and things are good.''
It is, in fact, a brand new season for the theater at Lime Kiln. The theater opened its 1994 season with The Mighty Rainmakers, a rock 'n' roll act, on May 29, and is now in high gear with ``Stonewall Country,'' its popular musical based on the life of Confederate hero Thomas Jonathan ``Stonewall'' Jackson.
``Things have never been better,'' said Martis, the board chairman. He and others point to a $500,000 Reader's Digest grant Lime Kiln will receive over the next five years, to a campaign to strengthen the theater's donor base through new corporate sponsorships, and to the simple fact that Lime Kiln actually ended last year in the black, as evidence of a new health.
``We met our budget last year,'' Martis said. ``I'm confident we'll do it again this year.''
If the gains are written in black and white, the losses may be harder to measure. But some wonder aloud if the theater has lost its drive along with the man who either wrote or rewrote many of its mountain-flavored works - including ``Stonewall Country,'' ``Virgil Powers,'' ``Ear Rings'' and ``Munci Meg.'' A man whose quest for perfection, say those who worked for him, could extend to painting sawdust and dusting rocks.
``Don always had something major coming out,'' said Howard Parker, a former Lime Kiln chairman of the board. ``I don't see any of that happening right now.''
``I hated to see the community lose Don,'' said Tommy Spencer, a co-founder of Lime Kiln, who withdrew from an active role in Lime Kiln himself following a marital breakup in 1988. ``I don't think they have anybody to replace him who can bring the same passion.''
Lime Kiln officials insist they aren't standing still.
A workshop session is planned for later this summer to polish up a new play, tentatively planned for production next year, said Mines. Other innovations include this year's Celebration of African-American Culture, which occurred in June, and a program in which Lime Kiln employees work with the public schools.
Mines is hoping for more original work in the future. ``It's taken a couple of years to get things off the ground,'' he said.
Others, meanwhile, said any fallout caused by Baker's departure has been overcome. Lori Weing, president of F.O.L.K.S. - the group of local volunteers who help out at Lime Kiln - said she feared the loss of Baker would cause problems, but it did not.
``The people I dealt with, anyway, felt that Lime Kiln wasn't one person. It's a wonderful experience, and it belongs to everyone,'' Weing said.
``He [Baker] is the reason there is something as special as Lime Kiln in Lexington. He deserves the credit,'' said Carol Elizabeth Jones, a resident artist at Lime Kiln.
But, Jones continued, ``I feel like things are very strong here. I think we just picked right up and kept going.''
It is, of course, a kind of miracle Lime Kiln is here at all.
The unusual theater was born with a production of ``A Midsummer Night's Dream'' in 1967. Baker and Spencer were still college students at Washington and Lee University. The land was owned in those days by an English professor at Virginia Military Institute, Brewster Ford.
``It just turned the community on its ear,'' Spencer recalled of the performance. ``We had a lot of fun.''
Years later, after urging Spencer and Baker to to do something more permanent with the overgrown lime kiln ruins, Ford donated the site for a theater. Baker - who had been working with the prize-wining Appalachian arts group Appalshop in Whitesburg, Ky. - and Spencer, by then a Lexington lawyer, became partners in the new venture.
With the help of Josephine Ayers, former director of the Alabama Shakespeare Co., and an army of local labor, Lime Kiln grew out of next to nothing in the early '80s. Volunteers built the theater piece by piece: the wooden seats, the roads, the sewer lines.
As Spencer orchestrated the massive volunteer effort, Baker forged the content.
``Don and I worked together fine,'' Spencer recalled recently. ``We had arguments, but we got over them and went on. Don waspassionately devoted to the project. But like most artists, had an ego that needed assuaging.''
Lime Kiln officially opened with a modernized version of ``Cymbaline'' in 1984.
The popular ``Stonewall Country'' was performed for the first time in 1985.
Written by Baker himself, with songs by Robin and Linda Williams, ``Stonewall Country'' has become Lime Kiln's best-known production (performances continue Tuesday through Saturday through July 16).
In between the plays, Lime Kiln featured music. Over the years, Lime Kiln and its adjacent amphitheater have featured such diverse performers as Mary-Chapin Carpenter, the Russian ``folk 'n' roll'' group, Limpopo, and Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys.
It's an odd blend, but it works. Many credit Baker.
``He really was the driving force'' behind Lime Kiln, said Parker, the former chairman of the board. But Parker added, ``It was always difficult. Don was a good artistic director. I think his inspiration was very important to the organization. But he was not a good administrator, and you had to keep him out of some things or he'd botch it up.''
To Josephine Ayers, who served as Lime Kiln's associate producer for its first two years, and who has worked for other theaters before and since, it is the refrain of a very old song.
``I do not know of a single theater in the world that has gotten along for a very long period of time without some of these problems,'' said Ayers, who lives in Anniston, Ala. ``I'm very sympathetic to the board in this, because I know that Don, like most artists, is hard to get hold of and hard to understand...When an artist is the founder of an institution, it is very difficult to say ``No'' to him.``
Ayers also said that in the early days, when Lime Kiln's budget was smaller, Baker may not have had to worry so much about expenses, since someone - usually Spencer - was always around to write a check.
Under Baker, Lime Kiln developed a reputation that Martis, the board chairman, now believes rivals that of the Barter Theater in Abingdon and other top regional playhouses.
It also developed debts. And although Martis was chairman of the Lime Kiln board when Baker left, Parker - who had departed the board for health reasons - said Baker might not have lasted much longer under his tenure, either.
``There were some things he was going to have to do that he wasn't doing,'' Parker said, such as giving the board time to find money for special undertakings before plunging ahead.
On the other hand, the way that Baker left made Parker angry. ``I think there was too much talk,'' he said. ``At one point there was an attempt to blacken Don. Don was very hurt about it all, and I think rightly so - although he should have seen it coming.''
Baker, in any case, has not been back.
``In many ways I miss it,'' he said of the theater he helped to build. ``In others, it's been a major relief.''
by CNB