Everybody knows "Jack and the Beanstalk," the fairy tale in which a boy trades away the family cow for magic beans that grows overnight into an enormous beanstalk up to a castle.
But in other tellings, Jack went on to have many more adventures, including here in Appalachia. And perhaps no one has done more to carry on and spread the Jack Tales than Rex Stephenson, a professor at Ferrum College who founded the Blue Ridge Dinner Theater. Stephenson dramatized the Jack Tales, cultivating a troupe of performers that for the last 50 years have performed them to more than a million audience members in 34 states and in England.
"Jack Tales are stories, mostly about a central Jack character," says Emily Blankenship-Tucker, who teaches Appalachian music and theater at Ferrum College. "The Jack that I know is lucky, and he's smart, and he goes through all kinds of situations where he encounters devils or giants or witches or big brothers that pick on him. And he always outsmarts whatever he's up against, and comes out on top."
Blankenship-Tucker has worked with Stephenson since 2001, when she first joined the troupe performing Jack Tales. She was just out of college, at a conference where he was looking for actors. She remembers reading about the Jack Tales Players at a showcase where various theater companies were pitching their upcoming shows.
"It said this was in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in a rural place, that we'd be out in elementary schools and performing traditional Appalachian tales and songs," says Blankenship-Tucker. "And I remember thinking, 'Oh that's the place I want to go.' I remember meeting Rex in a callback and him saying, 'You're going to work hard! You're going be up before the sun comes up! You're going to be out in elementary schools!' And I thought, 'Yeah. That's what I want to do.'"
But what started as a summer job turned into more than two decades of working with Stephenson in Ferrum. Today, Emily Blankenship-Tucker, her wife Rachel Blankenship-Tucker and their son Silas all work and perform with the Blue Ridge Dinner Theatre, which Stephenson help found in the 1970s. She says the group of players Stephenson cultivated is more than just a troupe of theater performers; it's a community, with its own sense of history and lineage.
"On the banner it says 'today and always,' because the stories we tell, the Jack Tales themselves, are part of an oral tradition," says Blankenship-Tucker. "There's also an oral tradition among the troupe, among the company. In the company, you can say, 'Oh I played this part and who I learned it from and who they learned it from,' and you can see the contributions of the storytellers as it goes on."
Stephenson presented the first edition of his Jack Tales at Callaway Elementary School in Franklin County in 1975. Blankenship-Tucker says that from the get-go, they were designed to engage kids in the audience.
"The first Jack Tales shows were in the round. You can see photos of actors going up to kids and say, 'Would you help me with this?'" she says. "There's nothing really there, but the kids get up and struggle together, because they see it."
Looking through photos, you can see how Stephenson engaged kids and got them to participate. In the hallway outside the theater, there's a prominent photo showing him surrounded by kids, smiling, roaring, laughing.
"You can see how playful that work is, and how engaged the kids are, and how freely they are into the story and into what we're doing," says Blankenship-Tucker. "It's a picture of Rex showing them, probably, 'let's be scary.' He's surrounded by kids who are maybe 9, 10, and they're all kind of going rarrh and leaning into that."
Stephenson wrote lots of other plays, including at least 25 that were performed on stage. He was known for playing famed American author Mark Twain, for example. But the Jack Tales became his calling card.
"Rex said at first he didn't know it would have such a life, and after a year, he thought maybe we should do something else," says Blankenship-Tucker. "And people would say, 'Can we book a Jack Tales show?' It's something folks have loved all that time."
Stephenson retired from Ferrum College in 2012. But that wasn't the end of his story – or Jack's story.
Emily Blankenship-Tucker, Rachel Blankenship-Tucker, and Rebecca Crocker came together to gather archival materials and clean up the old theater at Ferrum College. Tina Hanlon is a Ferrum College English professor who worked as Stephenson's script consultant for decades.
"What they have done in the last three years is unbelievably incredible," Hanlon says. "It was very sad when Rex retired in 2012 and the Blue Ridge Dinner Theatre closed down. They came up with the most brilliant plan to completely remodel this space. They got him back teaching, they got the idea for these murals and everything. All that is so incredible. That's all such a huge gift, and it's so wonderful they did it."
In 2023, they relaunched the Blue Ridge Dinner Theatre. The theater itself was named in honor of Rex Stephenson, and his image adorns the wall. Across from it is another illustration of the cover of Richard Chase's 1943 edition of the Jack Tales. Stephenson had received permission from illustrator Berkeley Williams' widow to use the image for his Jack Tale Players. Below it reads, "The house that Jack built."
A 1990 performance of the Jack Tales concludes with Rex Stephenson speaking to the crowd of students.
"Now back up in the mountains, you know morning comes early, so we've got to break up all these good times we've been having," Stephenson tells the kids. "But I do want to tell you. All of Jack's adventures. Why a man by the name of Mr. Chase, he wrote 'em all down. They're good stories for you to read and for you to read to your brothers and sisters. There's two books, and well we hope you'll read 'em. And thanks a lot of inviting us to your school today."
Stephenson died last week at the age of 81. His funeral will take place at Ferrum College on Saturday, to be a followed by a performance at the Blue Ridge Dinner Theatre.
