Most Kentuckians know that Danville is the home of the big band sound in June, when it plays host to the Brass Band Festival, but the city is also the home of big theater all summer long.

For the past 50 years, some 10,000 people have been drawn to Danville for an evening’s entertainment at the Pioneer Playhouse, Kentucky’s oldest outdoor theater.

Performers such as John Travolta, Lee Majors, Jim Varney and Bo Hopkins have gotten their start at the Pioneer. But the theater company has only just begun to make its mark in the theater world.

A visit to the Pioneer is a delight for the senses. Of course the actual production is a feast for the eyes and ears, but the Playhouse itself plays an important role in entertaining audiences.

Theater-goers enjoy an outdoor theater in an authentic setting when they visit the Pioneer Playhouse. They can browse amid 19th-century antiques, follow the scent of barbecued chicken right into the dining area and after a delicious meal, sit back and enjoy the show.

Center stage in all this is producer Eben Henson. The octogenarian’s past includes stints as an alligator wrestler, entrepreneur, Danville mayor and MGM location manager. However, Henson’s longest-running gig has been as the founder and producer of the Pioneer Playhouse.

He started the Playhouse in 1950, with $1,000 in a town with a population of less than 10,000. The initial ticket prices were $1.80 per show and only 99 cents for students.

Although the 1950s-style theater is a living museum, it also has a number of exhibits as well. For example, the Pioneer has John Travolta’s first acting resume, collected when he interned at the theater in 1969, and Lee Majors’ first publicity shot, taken in front of the Pioneer box office in 1962.

The Henson family calls the Pioneer Playhouse " a treasure trove of theater history" and with good reason. The theater itself is built from recycled materials straight off the pages of Kentucky history. When Henson built the Playhouse, he scavenged floor boards from a school and lights from an ice cream parlor. The hand-hewn rafter beams came from a local horse barn and cost a fifth of whiskey each - installed.

"I’m probably the first man into recycling," Henson says. "When I started, there wasn’t a word for it!"

The courtyard bricks are over 200 years old and came from the home of Ephraim McDowell, one of Kentucky’s earliest doctors. (McDowell’s story, by the way, was featured in a play written by Henson for the Pioneer, in which Travolta delivered his first stage lines.)

Henson estimates more than 1,000 actors have stepped across the stage of the Pioneer Playhouse and some notables have also visited the theater, even if they didn’t actually take the stage. Rock Hudson stopped by on a talent scouting expedition and the box office was used as a train station in the 1957 MGM movie "Raintree County," starring Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.

In 1962, Henson lobbied for and won state approval for the theater he hand-built from abandoned MGM movie sets and recycled horse barns. Pioneer Playhouse became the first official "state theater" in the nation and was later used as a model during the foundation of the National Endowment for the Arts.

However, despite his decades of work on the Pioneer’s behalf, Henson has never received a salary or been paid for one day’s work. Although the actual hours he has spent on the Pioneer are incalculable, his family estimates his contribution to the theater exceeds more than $1 million.

Henson manages to pay the bills, his and the theater’s, with income from various rental properties he operates, but his heart has always been with the Playhouse. Because, after all, the show must go on.

Deanna Mascle is a staff writer for The Lane Report.