Thanks to Local History and Genealogy Specialist Zachary Harris for sharing a brief history of the Johnson City Road Company, a theater troupe that performed regional plays across the country and brought recognition to Johnson City’s theater scene.
The Johnson City Road Company was a theater troupe in existence from the 1970s-90s. For two decades the group traveled around the country and world performing over 20 original plays. Taking a few trips to ETSU’s Archives of Appalachia and combing through the Library’s Johnson City Press Archive provided me with an introductory look at this local theater troupe.
While culturally rich cities like San Francisco or New York were epicenters of the performing arts, the Road Company from its inception sought to embody Northeast Tennessee. With original plays set in the Little Chicago era of Johnson City and the State of Franklin, the Road Company’s artistic voice was heavily colored by local history and culture.
The Road Company formed in 1975, and briefly called themselves the American Revolutionary Road Company. With a mix of local talent and out-of-state membership—its founder Robert Leonard was a Massachusetts native—the Road Company blended eclectic cultural influences and distinctly local storytelling talent.
Throughout its existence, a significant portion of the Road Company’s funding came from National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grants. Relatively unique in its time, the troupe sought to use this funding not just to bring culture from outside Northeast Tennessee, but to raise up local talent to tell the region’s stories.
The Road Company put on many successful plays, including “Horsepower: An Electric Fable,” which explored the relationship between humanity, technology, and energy. The troupe also served to attract renowned talent from inside and outside the region. Jo Carson, a local playwright, storyteller, author, and National Public Radio commentator, was often involved in productions like “Horsepower.” Other names in the field of writing and performance frequented the Road Company’s orbit. For instance, the Free Southern Theater founder John O’Neal performed his one man play, “Don’t Start me Talking or I’ll Tell You Everything I Know,” in December 1983.
While names from the performing arts were drawn to Johnson City through the Road Company’s influence, the troupe often took their performances on the road. During its two decades of existence, the Road Company would travel to festivals across the country, taking original and uniquely East Tennessee performances on the road in proper troubadour fashion.
One of the Road Company’s most enduring plays was “Echoes and Postcards,” a menagerie of songs, stories, and sketches deeply influenced by life in the region. This play was frequently featured at The Down Home music venue. (The Down Home was actually cofounded by Road Company member Ed Snodderly.)
“Echoes and Postcards” became so successful that the troupe took it on tour to Russia in 1994. The troupe signed a contract with the National Theater of Bashkortostan to perform the play in the republic’s national theater and throughout the surrounding region. In a cultural exchange, the Bashkortostan theater was intended to send actors to Northeast Tennessee as well, where they would perform Russian plays. However, likely due to the end of the Road Company just a few years later, that part of the agreement never came to fruition.
The Road Company began to wind down in the late 1990s. In the mid 90s, the NEA faced increasing pressure from lobbying groups and Congress for funding artists deemed controversial. In 1996, the NEA’s budget dropped from $170 million to $99 million. This extreme drop in funding heavily effected groups like the Road Company that relied primarily on grant funding for their projects.
While the troupe held on for a few more years, the lack of reliable funding led to its dissipation in 1998. There have been some Road Company reunions in recent years—like a reading of “Echoes and Postcards” at The Down Home in 2015—but overall the Road Company remains an often forgotten part of Johnson City’s history of performance and storytelling.
While the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough continues the tradition of regional storytelling, the Road Company left an example for local up-and-coming artists interested in troubadour performance to follow, and told our region’s stories in unique ways.
If you enjoyed this story and want to explore more of our region’s history, stop by the Library’s Tennessee Room or check out our Johnson City Press Archive.
More News
