Taken from field interviews with Appalachian coal miners and their families, Fire on the Mountain offers stories of their lives and their relationships with each other. Punctuated by authentic music of the area, played on familiar instruments but just as often rendered a capella or to feet stomping rhythmically, themes emerge: Both lands and laborers have been exploited, yet the people love their land and each other. Vivid slides on both sides of a bright blue backdrop picture miners' sooty faces or legs deep in mud or bodies tensed as arms swing axes. Skeletons of trees appear trapped in barren earth, and dirty streams are hardly distinguishable from the clouds above them. Life often seems to be in suspension, particularly when women in shapeless cotton, faded-flower-patterned dresses (like those worn on stage) wait for men to come back from work. Or not. Naturally, there are pictures of funerals.
How can people in such conditions make such beautiful music? To be sure, as Molly Andrews, the consummate Daughter proves, much is baleful, like "Coal Miners' Blues," though she can lighten up, as in "Come All Ye Young Fellas."
In parallel fashion, Rob Barnes moans "I Got Dem Coal Loadin' Blues," yet can praise the Lord joyfully. Mark Baczynski commemorates the "Blind Fiddler" but mainly makes that instrument's sound soar.
Jason Edwards, Brian Gunter and Jim Price double as singers and players of authentic old-time (including choral), bluegrass and folk music on authentic instruments -- banjo, dobro, fiddle, mandolin. Kim Crow as plain-as-all-get-out Mama sometimes helps pick a sound out or claps in rhythm. When it's story-telling time, she represents the family woman's point of view, just as Mike Regan interprets narratively the story of "The Miner" throughout the years.
Mining begins with companies buying land -- from settlers who do not know its value -- at rock-bottom prices and making not-to-be-kept promises to protect it. Encompassed are unionizing, switching to strip mining, publicizing of black lung disease, passing of laws, the ecological movement, political action and inaction, and recent mine disasters. In between are celebrations, hoe-downs, porch parties, occasions of remembrance. A trio of "rememberers" includes children (straightforward Thatcher Svekis and Austin Ashbaugh), who query "Where Is Our Dear Father?"
Standouts among the musical memories are "Tin of Morphine" (stuff that miners brought with them in case of serious accidents), "Which Side Are You On, Boys?" sung by strikers in the face of scabs, and "Mr. Peabody's Coal Train," originally composed as a commercial song.
The compilers/directors of Fire on the Mountain are still refining it as a theatrical piece. Luckily, Florida Studio Theater has embarked on a new program that seeks audience input on works of substance. The night I attended, audience members offered equally substantial impressions, questions and valuable asides -- many from personal experiences in mines, mining camps and towns, families of miners. There were even two "company men" but neither was booed. Perhaps the drama had led to catharsis. Or were people just being polite?
