Carbondale’s community theater, The Stage Co., brings the story of the people of Appalachia to Southern Illinois in its production of Foxfire, the theater’s final play of the 1997-98 season.

Foxfire is a drama about Annie Nations, who after the death of her husband is left living alone on an Appalachian mountaintop. Her son, a noted folk singer, wants her to move to his home in Atlanta, but Annie refuses to leave the land to keep in touch with the ghost of her husband Hector.

Director Kimberly Welker said everyone will be able to relate to this story in some way, shape or form.

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It’s Annie, Hector or Dillard that people are going to laugh or cry with the characters because the characters take you on an emotional journey, she said.

Foxfire is based on a story from a collection of magazines produced by ninth and 10th grade students of Rabun Gap-Nacoochee school in Mountain City, Ga.

In 1966, Elliot Wigginton, a teacher from Cornell University, threw away the Rabun Gap-Nacoochee students’ textbooks and challenged them to write a magazine. The collective efforts of the students produced Foxfire magazine. The magazine is still published today by students of Rabun school.

The characters of the play are fictional, but the lead role of Aunt Annie was inspired by interviews with Aunt Arie from the first Foxfire magazine.

Hume Cronyn (Hector) and Jessica Tandy (Annie) starred in the first stage production of Foxfire. John Denver played Dillard in the Hallmark movie production of Foxfire.

Theodora Tippy Bach, a retired Carbondale Community High School speech and English teacher, plays the role of Annie in The Stage Co.’s production of Foxfire.

Bach said the play is a sad story about a differing set of opinions with situations which are closely related to real life. Bach also said she loves the Smoky Mountains and the character of Annie Nations.

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I like the role because some of the lines from the play were taken directly from the magazine, she said. It’s like living her life.

Bach visited the Smoky Mountains last October. She said she likes the story for its content, the area for its beauty and the tenaciousness of the people.

Welker and her husband visited Highlands, N.C., and Raban Gap, Ga., to research and record the area and its people in an attempt to accurately portray the setting, the accents and the nature of the characters in the play.

The scenery was gorgeous. This was an inspiration for the set, she said. No one treated us like a stranger. Everywhere we went we were welcomed.

After their trip, the Welkers were determined to bring a piece of the Smoky Mountains home with them.

We felt that the set is in many ways another character in the play, and it required a distinct and colorful personality, she said.

The Welkers and the rest of the cast and crew at the Stage Co. did a phenomenal job in creating the highland ambiance.

The stage is wide with a big country oak wood porch on the right. The working front door leads to a realistic kitchen. The small tool shed that sits stage left serves as a dominant foreground object, but the cool blue cloudless sky that touches the tips of the mountain commands the stage.

The finishing touches of the set are just as strategically constructed and placed as the major pieces of the set.

The atmosphere is further captured by the honeysuckle branches, old fencing, small garden tools and other decorations surrounding the small, intimate theater. These details are topped off by smell of cedar incense burning on stage.

Welker said the collaboration of the cast and crew will make The Stage Co.’s production of Foxfire a memorable experience.

The effort of the six actors who dedicated two months of their lives working to bring their characters to life and the crew who spent countless hours duplicating the look and feel of Stony Lonesome will make Foxfire an emotional experience, she said.

Factoid:Foxfire opens today and continues April 17, 18, 19, 24, 25 and 26. Its final weekend is May 1, 2 and 3. Curtain time is 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and at 2 p.m. Sundays.

The Stage Co. is located 101 N. Washington. For information, call 549-5466.