Above: Ira David Wood III as Sir Walter Raleigh and Lynda Clark as Queen Elizabeth I in Raleigh. Photo courtesy of Theatre in the Park.
David Wood Wants People to Remember Raleigh’s Theater History. He’s Seen Most of It.
By Elizabeth Brignac
For the January/February issue of Midtown, we interviewed Theatre in the Park’s executive director, Ira David Wood III (known as David), and its artistic director, Ira David Wood IV (known as Ira), about Theatre in the Park’s history and plans for the future and its influence on the Raleigh theater scene. Space limitations meant that we couldn’t include as much of this rich interview as we would have liked in the article that appeared in the print magazine.
Here you will find an extended version of the interview. It has been lightly edited and organized by subject since we touched on some topics more than once. It covers a lot—the history of Theatre in the Park; the history of theater in Raleigh and why it matters; the ephemeral nature of theatrical performance as an integral aspect of the art form; theater’s mission in the community; balancing the need for experimentation in theater with traditional expectations in a diverse community, and many other topics.
David Wood’s perspective as an artist who has helped drive theater in Raleigh for the past fifty years is an invaluable community resource. I hope you enjoy this record of his thoughts and ideas about his life’s work, and Ira’s perspective on taking Theatre in the Park into the future.
David Wood’s First Production with The Children’s Theatre of Raleigh
Midtown: Theatre in the Park started as a children’s theater, correct?
David Wood: That’s correct. It was The Children’s Theater of Raleigh, which was founded in 1947. And I think it’s the oldest children’s theater, [in Raleigh]. When I came on board [with the theater] in the early 1970s, I said, “Let me go into each high school in the city, talk to the students and tell them we want to do an original rock opera and audition them after school.” So we had 700 people audition. We ended up with a cast, band and crew of 200.
I must have had a dozen high school students from schools all across the city work with me for a week and a half to create both music and lyrics for an original rock opera. My only instruction to them was, “Pretend that you are talking to your mother and your father and you are being 100% honest with them for the first time.” So they wrote this rock opera about a young man who could only say one word: ‘Why?’ And this was pre Tommy [a 1969 rock opera by The Who that helped establish the genre]. It was pretty amazing. Of course, we didn’t have a name for the central character—they indicated him in the script by the letter X. So when it came time to name him and to name the musical, they decided to name it Ecks.
X is ridiculed and made fun of by his peers when he’s younger. But as he grows older, people begin to read all kinds of things into this one word that he speaks. He’s befriended by the president of an international corporation. He eventually runs for President. He survives an assassination attempt. By the end of the play, he’s heralded as the new messiah.
At the end of the play, he is going to address the world and finally say something other than the word “why?” He takes the podium and he’s just getting ready to speak, and someone stands up in the audience and interrupts him, saying, “I’ve been sitting here watching this rock opera for an hour and a half now and all you’ve said is one word: ‘Why?’ I have a hot idea for you: Why not?” And then the guy in the audience storms out of the auditorium. And everybody on stage looks at each other and then one by one, they begin to file off the stage and follow the guy who said, ‘Why not?’ And they abandon X—the stage is bare, and X is the only one left. And he looks at the audience, sits down, puts his head in his hands and says, “Why?” And we didn’t close the curtain; we didn’t dim the lights. We just let the audience sit there and ponder it until somebody realized the play was over and they started applauding. But we got standing ovations between both acts.
The newspapers in town had a run—I mean, we got the best publicity we could have hoped for. I was called a communist and a degenerate and I was going to be run out of town on a rail—and of course, that sold out the houses. And right after that, the children’s theater said, “We want you to be our executive director.” And I said I would accept, but I wanted to change the focus of the theater so it was a family theater and not just a children’s theater. And so that’s what we did.
Becoming Theatre in the Park
David Wood: The first production we did after Ecks was Shakespeare’s Hamlet. And we did that outdoors in the rose garden amphitheater. We played to—I want to say 12,000 people. We did it in modern dress, and the response was incredible. This coming season [2025], my son, Ira will be doing Hamlet. It’s exciting to think that it’s come full circle.
Midtown: So you both directed it and played Hamlet?
David Wood: Yeah. I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know that that was impossible. Also, the theater said, “You have a $127 budget.” We made nighttime trips to houses that were being torn down, and we absconded with lumber, and that’s how we built our set. Every day we would go to the rose garden to practice, and we would find that the set had been painted by vandals during the night. Every day we’d come in and have to repaint it. That’s the way we started.
]Theatre in the Park changed our name finally when we found the Pullen Park Armory. When I walked into that building, I said, “Well, gosh—this is a theater!” It was a black box theater. I just imagined that I had walked into a new home. We took our time—it took a year or so for us to get all of the other interest groups out of the armory so we could turn it into a full theater. We painted it black—floor, ceiling and walls. And we’re able now to design a set and then put the audience around it.
A Christmas Carol and Memorial Auditorium
David Wood: In 1974, we were doing a season of Shakespeare. We had done Romeo and Juliet, Taming of the Shrew, and we got to the Christmas season and of course, Shakespeare hadn’t written a Christmas show. So we went to the second-best English author, Charles Dickens, and we decided to do an adaptation of A Christmas Carol.
When we opened in 1974 at Theatre in the Park, we had a seating capacity of around 200. We had to sell the seat cushions off the sofas in the lobby to accommodate the crowds. We ended up getting cushions for the kids to sit on on the floor in front of the risers. [At that time], theaters were by and large closed for the holiday season. And I thought that was strange because I felt like during the holidays, families wanted to go out and spend time together. So that’s how we decided to approach A Christmas Carol. I wanted to make it a musical comedy. I wanted it to have enough visual humor and jokes that would appeal to children, but I also wanted to have a level of humor that would appeal to adults. So that’s what we went for.
After about three years at Theatre in the Park, we were playing 17 performances [to accommodate all the people who wanted to see the show in this smaller theater], and we were exhausted. So we said,”Let’s go down and look at Memorial Auditorium, which was shut up and locked and only hosted wrestling matches and high school and college graduations. When we asked the city manager for a key to Memorial Auditorium, he couldn’t find one. The president of our board of directors had bolt cutters in the trunk of her car, and we were allowed to cut the chain off the door to get into Memorial Auditorium. When the doors opened, a rat as big as a dog ran and crossed the opening. The light spilled in on Memorial Auditorium and I just went, “Oh my Lord, this is incredible!” So we were the first theater that took productions down to Memorial.
We did The Three Musketeers. We did The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And then we decided to do what we called a sampler of all of the arts in Raleigh. We had dance schools and other theaters doing samples of their work. We presented it one night and Raleigh got to see a sampling of all of the arts that were available to them. So now, when I ride by the complex that Memorial has become, it’s nice to think that Theatre in the Park had a real hand in opening the city’s eyes to what they had. Because not long after we began taking shows down there, the city realized what a gem they had, and the renovations followed shortly after, and then the additions were added. So that’s been a really wonderful feeling, to know that we were part of the beginning of what I think has been a real renaissance in Raleigh. And we’ve been fortunate to have been part of that.
When I started A Christmas Carol, I was 27. I’m 77 this year, and I retired from the role last year and turned it over to my oldest son, Ira. He’s the one with the energy and the fresh blood and a lot of creative ideas. And it’s exciting now to kind of sit back in the dark and watch him take the center stage and watch him begin to create and shape the theater for the next 50 years of the show. So that’s where we are now.
Midtown: What are some things that have excited you as you’ve watched Raleigh’s theater world grow?
David Wood: I’ve seen more fearlessness in terms of experimentation—theaters are really stretching and growing. I think Theatre in the Park was the first to do a nude scene in Raleigh. That was a very daring thing to do and nobody knew if it was going to succeed. It was in an original play of mine called The Gathering. And what we had to do was project nude bodies onto two actors who were clothed in white. As the lights dimmed on the stage, the projection of the nude bodies started to appear—it looked almost like they were sweating through their clothes. So even though they weren’t actually nude on stage, the effect was that they were. It went over beautifully, and then we went on to productions like Hair and M. Butterfly. There were Tennessee Williams productions where we had nudity on the stage. It just became something that was accepted by the theater community.
Raleigh’s Theater Community Today
David Wood: When I came to Raleigh in the 1970s, there were very few theater organizations. Most of the theaters in town were college theaters, and the Raleigh Little Theatre was here. But now we have close to 90 theater organizations in our area. So that’s pretty amazing. And whereas theaters used to depend on season ticket sales, what’s happened over a period of time is that season ticket sales have declined a bit because of the exciting variety in Raleigh. Theater goers tend to move around and select shows that interest them. So we’re sharing audiences and they’re getting to see all different kinds of theater.
When I first came to Raleigh, if you acted at one theater, you didn’t go to another theater. Theaters didn’t share their talent. It was very insular when I first came, and now there is such a feeling of cooperation and interdependence. We depend on each other for so many things—for talent, for technical expertise, for costumes, scenery, so many things—and because of that, I think the arts are stronger.
The audiences were the same way when I first came to Raleigh. They felt like, “OK, if I’m a season member of this theater, I can’t go to another theater. I owe this theater my allegiance.” That’s no longer true. We’ve all grown, and the audience has a chance to sample art in all of the theaters in this area if they so choose. And I think they’ve taken their cue from the fact [the theaters are interdependent]. Now they’re sharing their theater experiences and sampling other theaters’ work. That means we’re stronger as a community, and that’s so heartening to realize
When one theater succeeds, we all succeed and the more the audience knows about what we do, the better we become because they demand the best from us. That’s the best thing that happens: we become better performers, better artists because of our audiences.
Ira Wood: I spent about 10 years out in L.A. and was doing quite well, and then I heard that my father was having heart surgery for that first time. [Note: As many people know, David Wood had another heart surgery in December of 2024. As of January, 2025, he is recovering well.] I paused my life a bit and said to myself, “You know, L.A. is not going anywhere—but my dad might, and I want to be here for all that time. It was one of the best decisions I’ve made because I love what I do. I love the local theater community and the actors. They’re an extension of my own family.
People have asked me the difference between acting in L.A. and acting in Raleigh. And I have said, “It’s very easy. In L.A.,when you meet an actor, they say, “Who’s your agent?” or “What project are you working on?” And if you meet an actor here in Raleigh, you go, “Oh my God here, let me buy you a drink! Tell me about the role you’re doing!” So it really is a special theater community here, and it’s always growing.
Midtown: I do frequently hear that the theater community in Raleigh is very mutually supportive.
Ira Wood: Absolutely. Especially for the actors who are born and raised here because we’ve all run into each other or worked with each other to some degree. It’s very easy to pick up a phone and call someone and say, “Hey, I’ve just read this script and I think this part is right for you,” or, “Hey, we need this prop or this set piece for the show. Do you mind lending it out?” So, yeah, it’s a really healthy community I think.
What Theater Does for the Community
David Wood: We do want you to think when you come to see a show. We want our productions to be a main course, not a dessert…Somebody approached me one night in the lobby before a production, and they said, “I hope I don’t have to think tonight.” And I said, “When did thinking become a painful process? The medicine doesn’t have to taste bad to do good!” We can entertain you, and that’s the first thing we want to do. And after that, we want to empower and educate. That’s the subtext, I think, to everything that the arts should be doing, which is touching hearts, changing lives. Regardless of the play that you select, that’s your goal. And as long as that is your goal, and you’ve got that dream and you go for it, then I think success follows. But you have to have that as the central theme, I think, to anything you do.
Ira Wood: The theme of entertaining with the subtext being touching hearts, changing lives, creating new ways of thinking—yeah. And to jump on what dad just said, [a goal should be] celebrating our commonalities and what makes us human beings— the things that we can all relate to and connect with. Theater is a place for healing and empowerment and not feeling so alone. We are all still on this planet, one big family.
David Wood: The most priceless gift you can give anyone is your time. So when the audience comes to see a show, they’re giving us two or two and a half hours of their precious time, and we don’t want to waste it. We want them to walk out of what they’ve witnessed being better people for having seen it—learning something new, learning to question their own ideas, perhaps.
Theater History and the Ephemeral Nature of Performance
David Wood: It’s a very special kind of person, I think, who is willing to give their life to the kind of profession where you live in and of the moment and then you’re gone. In two generations. you’ve disappeared. Your family’s gone and those who knew you are gone. But occasionally, you find a Shakespeare. Occasionally you have a Tennessee Williams. Someone who comes along and leaves something that’s indelible; that lives on. Most of us can’t live that long, but we aspire to leave something behind us that helped to make the world a better place while we were part of it all.
Being 77 years old and having spent 50 years here making theater, I would like to see a better understanding and appreciation for the past—for generations that went before whose shoulders we stand on. We have a group of young actors working on the stages now in Raleigh who have no idea of the generations who went before, who have earned them the right to exist. I know of actors that I worked with who were elderly when I came to Raleigh in the 1970s who are gone now. They were instrumental in creating such incredible theater that this younger generation will never know about because live theater exists for the moment. You’re making footprints in the sand, and the waves and the wind wash them away. We’ve had generations in Raleigh who have done the impossible. And I wish there was a better way for those who remember what’s gone before to pass it along to the new generations.
I think any time you have a better sense of where you’ve come from—of theater history, for instance; of knowing that there was a time when actors were denied Christian burials. To have that kind of knowledge when you walk out on the stage gives you such pride and courage to stand out there and represent, not only your cast and your crew, but every actor, every director, every playwright who’s gone before, who has fought the battle, to win you the right to enjoy this moment that you’re in.
I wish there was some way to give our current generation a better understanding and appreciation of history because the work we’re doing right now—in 10 or 20 years, it will be gone from people’s memory. They’re not going to remember this or that production. We don’t remember shows anyway—we remember moments.
Thankfully, after 50 years, we have people coming back to us reminding us of moments that they saw. I played Hamlet in 1973, and I still occasionally have people who come up to me and say, “I was there the night you shot the airplane down.” We did it outdoors, and I was getting ready to do the “To be or not to be” speech when a little Piper Cub airplane flew over the amphitheater, and the audience could hear it. It was circling over—I guess the pilot saw the lights on the stage and circled the amphitheater. And I just looked up at the plane—thankfully, we were doing the show in modern dress, so I could admit to the existence of an airplane—and I just pointed my finger at the plane as though my finger were a gun. I pointed to the sky and I said “To be,” and then I pointed to the ground and said, “or not to be.” And that’s the way I started this speech.
So I took a total accident and incorporated it into what I was doing. The audience knew it was in and of that second of time—it would not exist at the next performance. They knew they were seeing something that was remarkable. And so that’s the moment that some people remember. So those moments survive.
I would like to have opportunities for our artists to be remembered like that because we don’t do things that are preserved necessarily except in people’s memories, and that’s where we live. That’s our bit of immortality that we get: we are remembered. Edwin Booth, a very famous actor, once said, “Why must we all go and be forgotten?” And I think that’s one of the reasons that we do what we do is that to hope that we have a bit of immortality; that we are remembered.
I can look at Ira now and say, “Yes, I’ve got confidence that for instance, A Christmas Carol has an opportunity to go on for another 50 years.” So that’s pretty incredible for anybody in our profession, particularly in live theater, where you only exist until the curtain comes down and then the play is over and you go home and then you do it again the next night. Yes, I guess that’s the blessing and the curse about what it is that we do.
Theater’s Great Tool: The Audience’s Imagination
Ira Wood: In the current state of technology, with CGI [and similar technologies], I hope that there’s going to be a renaissance and resurgence when it comes to theater. Maybe people are longing to come to a place where you can look at something you can put your hands on—you can look at flesh and blood. Theater is one of the oldest professions in the world, and I think that’s for a reason. I think that it’s a place where you have to flex a muscle that I hope is not getting weakened: imagination and creative problem-solving, where you can’t just type in a keyboard and put 20 light sabers on the screen. We just did Henry V, and the English had to fight the French, and Shakespeare doesn’t tell you how to make that possible.
Sometimes when you stumble along, you can stumble into a brilliant idea. And I think that happens in theater all the time because of our limited resources and it’s really something special and magical to witness…It’s not like a sculpture or a painting that lasts forever. It’s a bittersweet feeling as an actor knowing that that night or that moment or that experience is gone forever and it’s not something that you can get again. I think that is the poetry and the romance of being a theater actor.
[An actor interacting with the audience] is building a relationship. It’s very special. You can hear people laughing and you just don’t get that intimacy [without a live audience]. Even if you’re in a huge theater, there’s still an intimacy to it that you can’t get the more diffuse everything is.
If there can be a moment on stage where it’s just silent and the audience doesn’t want to move or open a piece of candy because they don’t want to break that moment, you’re co-creating that reality together. It’s really special to be a part of when you hit that moment or that awakening.
David Wood: The most magical words in the world are “once upon a time” because once you say those words aloud, you shift into a receptive kind of state that you remember from being a child and maybe sitting in your grandmother’s lap or your parent’s lap. And that’s the feeling you get when the lights come up and the curtain rises—you almost can feel that “once upon a time” feeling because you’re getting ready to be transported by the greatest conveyor that we have, which is our own imagination.
And that’s the wonder of theater as well, as Ira was saying—we suspend our disbelief. We can look at an expressionistic set and imagine everything that we don’t see. That’s one of the beautiful instruments we have to work with as theater professionals: the audience’s imagination. Someone once said that all that acting is, is a lesson in applied psychology. It’s like, knowing if you want to frighten someone, that you don’t show them what you want to frighten them with. Let their imagination do it. They can imagine what’s behind that door or behind that curtain or in that coffin. And it’s going to be much more frightening than what you could create because each individual has their own fear, and all you need is the imagination to kindle it.
That’s why I think you never run out of things to learn as a performer. Every night is like an acting class. When you’re on stage or even in the audience watching someone perform, you’re learning from them. When Frank Langella came out for his curtain call, when he played Dracula on Broadway and snapped that cape during the curtain call, 15 women passed out in the audience. It was an amazing thing to watch. Or to see Richard Kiley on Broadway do Man of La Mancha, singing that final number. “The trumpets of glory now call me to ride!” And he’s getting up off his deathbed and he’s revived again, and the audience is looking at him and they’re thinking, “Oh yeah, he’s up—he’s not going to die!” And he gets to that pinnacle in the song where he goes “And the wild winds of fortune/ Shall carry me onward/ Oh whithersoever they blow/ Onward to glory”— and he pauses. And he takes three breaths and dies. The audience literally goes from a mountain top to a valley in three breaths. That’s brilliant acting where you can take an entire audience from joy to tears and you move them that fast. That’s live theater.
And you’re feeling that audience every night. and they’re responding to you by their applause, their laughter as well as their silences. It’s a beautiful cycle that happens every night between the audience and the performers on the stage: your giving us your time and attention and your responses. And we’re going to respond to those with our talent, with our acting, with our imaginations, and together we’re going to create a moment that’s unforgettable, that will touch your life, that will touch your heart and that you will walk out being a better person. And if you can do that, you go home every night and put your head on your pillow justified because you’ve helped make the world a little bit better because of your activity and dedication and talent.
I feel like I preached a sermon.
Diverse Plays for Diverse Interests
David Wood: We try to put something in for everybody—experimental plays, original premiers, Shakespeare, classic theater. We try to run the range of productions— what we’re excited to do and what we think the audience will be excited to see. So that’s how we started and we’ve been able to maintain that.
When we started doing Shakespeare [in the 1970s], we were told that people wouldn’t cross the street in Raleigh to see Shakespeare. And we found out that was certainly not true. Raleigh has supported the classics. It has supported all of the arts in a wonderful way. And with the Research Triangle so close to us, we’re playing to audiences that come from all over the world. Because of that, the quality of theater [in Raleigh] has improved because the audience has demanded that kind of quality. In many cases, they come from larger metropolitan areas where they’re used to professional theater.
On deciding how to handle a controversial show with an audience of diverse values:
If you read a new work—if it speaks to you in a loud enough voice and resonates as something that is deserving of being heard by a wider audience—that’s [the production you do]. The work dictates how much of the peace you’re going to disturb in the process. Once you’re there and you’re part of it, you start to make layered decisions about how you approach the elements of originality.
But I think if you go into it trying to modify it, you know, so it doesn’t offend—that’s not the way to do it. You’re going to offend somebody. You know, you can entertain some of the people some of the time, but you can’t entertain everybody all of the time.
What’s Next for Theatre in the Park?
Midtown: Ira, where is your creative energy taking you with this? Where are you planning on going with Theatre in the Park?
Ira Wood: Well, I think for the reasons that I love theater in the first place, [I want to] engage people—to get them to think. And I want to empower local actors and volunteers.
Midtown: David has emphasized that Theatre in the Park has utilized a diverse lineup of shows—mixing the classics and Shakespeare with experimental and new shows. Will you continue to take that approach?
Ira Wood: Oh, absolutely. Right now, I’m really excited about Hamlet. Just last season, I starred as Henry V and directed that, and it was a fantastic show. I was so pleased with the talent that came out to audition. New people are moving to the Triangle all the time, so I’m seeing new actors come in and saying, “Thank you for doing a play like Henry V. Thank you for doing Shakespeare and taking a chance.”
Once we finish Hamlet, I [would like to] film it. There’s this budding technology today that makes it so easy to put together a movie or a short. And I said, “We could use the entire theater as the set. Hamlet could see his father’s ghost up on the roof with the soldiers, and then we could follow him with the camera all the way on the stage and play a scene on the stage. Then he walks out of the artist’s entrance to smoke a cigarette, and now he’s doing “To be or not to be.” We’ll shoot in black and white! We’ll do all this! We’ll do all that! So I try to find fresh takes, new ideas— push boundaries as I inch toward middle age.
Midtown: What are some of your dream productions? What are some productions you would really like to see done over the next few years?
Ira Wood: Cyrano de Bergerac has always been on my mind. That was a show I saw my father and mother do. She is a local actress, and she played Roxanne. That play really hit home for me and was influential. So that’s the first one that comes to mind. There’s still some Shakespeare I’d like to do. I also write, and I’m working on a few plays right now, which I would love to premiere. I’ve got a few in the works. I won’t give away any plots. But I’m excited.
We also want to create opportunities for actors, directors and playwrights in the area at Theatre in the Park.
Midtown: What kind of opportunities?
Ira Wood: We want to do readings. We want to give playwrights a chance to use their voices. What’s wonderful about having all these actors who are friends and co-workers is, you can pick up the phone and say, “Hey, I’ve got this play that I want to read and see what it sounds like.” And you get to sit there and hear this thing you’ve just heard in your head for months. And that gives you a new idea and direction to take to adjust your script.
David Wood: Let me add that we have a finite number of performance spaces in Raleigh. And one of the directions that we’ve gone in is to try to open ours up to more representation from the artistic community so we can get new directors in and give them a chance to direct a full-length production on stage. It’s important to give these people a chance to have an experience as new playwrights, new directors and actors. As long as we’re doing things that excite the artistic community, they will come.
I think that’s the key to this theater’s success. It always saw new ways to do classics and to do its outreach in terms of trying to engage new talent and give them opportunities. [This approach] causes our artistic community to grow and prosper. If one theater does well, all the theaters tend to do well because it only strengthens the arts. And that’s really what you want to do: leave the world a little better because you’ve had your time in it.
