ZONA, The Ghost of Greenbrier will be presented by the FOX LANE PLAYERS in the Mary Lou Meese theater at Fox Lane High School the weekend of November 16 through 17.
Performances are scheduled for Friday and Saturday at 7:00 P.M. with a Sunday Matinee at 1:00 P.M.. Tickets can be purchased by calling the box office at 864-3499 and are $8.00 for students and seniors and $12.00 for regular adult tickets at the door.
The play, by award winning playwright Jan Buttram, has only been produced by professional theater companies and gets its initial amateur production with the Players.
Based on actual events and told with traditional song and dance of Appalachia, ZONA, The Ghost of Greenbrier is a true story set in 1896. Zona Heaster Shue, a newly married young woman, dies under mysterious circumstances. As her husband publicly grieves for her, Zona's mother claims she has been visited by her daughter's ghost, who has appeared several times to say she was murdered by her husband.
It is the only case in American Jurisprudence where the testimony of a ghost was allowed to be placed into evidence.
The state of West Virginia has erected a state historical marker near : the cemetery in which Zona Shue is buriee. It reads:
“Interred in nearby cemetery is Zona Heaster Shue. Her death in 1897 was presumed natural until her spirit appeared to her mother to describe how she was killed by her husband Edward. Autopsy on the exhumed body verified the apparition’s account. Edward (Trout), found guilty of murder, was sentenced to the state prison. Only known case in which testimony from a ghost helped convict a murderer.”
Director Ed Steele, who appeared in the World Premiere production of ZONA, produced by New York City’s Abingdon Theater Company at the historic Hudson Guild Theater prior to joining the faculty at Fox Lane, noted that, “Sometimes you can’t make anything up that challenges the truth.”
The company of 45 (Actors and Technicians) has been in rehearsal since the beginning of October, and includes seniors Sam Reig, Eric Simon, Jenna Perlstein, Oren Cohn, Emily Anderson, Ursula Seymour, Abby Stuckey, Brian Weeks, Erik Long and Joshua Safranek,
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