Onancock Main Street Mural Project

Mural at Ames Street

Theater of Dreams, created by artist, Curtis Goldstein.

A celebratory portrayal of Onancock’s performing arts tradition. A fanciful montage of symbolic and real theatrical performers is represented in a transitioning vista, beginning at the wharf, passing the Historic Onancock School, then on to the North Street Playhouse stage where spotlights shine, smiles are made, and dreams come true. Finally, the viewer reaches the Roseland Theatre where fantasy and reality mix and glow on the silver screen.

The major elements:

• In 1665, the Fowlkes Tavern in Accomack hosted the first play in America, Ye Barre and Ye Cubbe, referring to England and the Colonies, here represented by constellations Ursa Major and Minor (nickname; Momma and Baby Bear), visible year-round in the Virginia night sky. In recent years, the play has been reenacted in Onancock.

• The James Adams Floating Theatre, which plied the waters of the Chesapeake Bay from 1914 to 1941, arrives at twilight under the Virginia dogwoods. Above, seated among the stars, is the theatre company’s leading lady Beulah Adams Hunter, known as “the Mary Pickford of the Chesapeake”, framed by a brilliant glowing moon.

• A procession into town of performers—a mix of patterned silhouettes of a Renaissance actor, a waltzing couple, a juggling harlequin, and real community members exiting the Historic Onancock School en route to the North Street Playhouse, where the evening’s entertainment is about to begin.

• On the stage are featured a variety of actors, dancers, and musicians—selected images of actual North Street Playhouse performers.

• Finally, the scene transitions from live theater to film, crossing the Roseland Theatre ticket booth, and into a world where light, sound, lens, and celluloid bring dreams to life. One of the theatre’s two original carbon arc 35mm sound motion projectors shines a beam across imagined movie icons that range from 1951, the year the theatre opened, to the present.

• Mural funded by a Virginia Main Street Downtown Improvement Grant. The Town of Onancock provided the required matching funds for this grant.