California Story Fund
“Long Shadow “ (Ebaugh Project)
Foothill Theatre Company
Nevada City
Project Director: Philip Charles Sneed
Creating a play from 60-year-old local incident
What causes a community to take justice into its own hands and how does it justify its actions? This was the crux of a new play developed by the Foothill Theatre Company in Nevada City and funded under the California Story Fund.
The play was based on a true story. A local war hero, home on leave in 1944, is shot to death under mysterious circumstances. The prime suspect is an eccentric rumored to run naked through the woods and poach livestock. His name is “Wild Bill” Ebaugh. A so-called citizens committee takes out an ad in the local newspaper announcing a reward for his capture. Freelance bounty hunters take to the woods armed with guns. Half the community clamors for Ebaugh’s capture, and the other half help Ebaugh elude both the bounty hunters and the law. Ebaugh is eventually shot and killed.
“Mention Ebaugh at a social gathering today, and that’s what people will talk about for the rest of the evening,” said Philip Charles Sneed, artistic director of the Foothill Theater Company. As recently as the 1970s, a documentary filmmaker was threatened with violence when he tried to pursue the story. In the years since then, the threat of violence has diminished, but the topic still invites heated debate among locals.”
A staged reading of the play-in-progress took place in May 2004. The California Story Fund grant allowed the theater company to continue research and story-gathering about the Ebaugh case. “We hope to learn more about the story, identify more people who were alive at the time, and improve the accuracy of the story,” Sneed said.
A fully staged production of the play -- titled “Long Shadow” -- took place in May 2005.