CHEROKEE - When James Bradley returned to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians' reservation after eight years away from the mountains of Western North Carolina, he found "Unto These Hills" -- the outdoor drama about Cherokee history that has been a summertime tradition for more than half a century -- in disarray.

"When I came back to the show in 2000 ... we had lost 50 percent of our audience," said Bradley, executive director of the Cherokee Historical Association. "The attention to detail in the show and just the little things that made the show special seemed to be gone."

So Bradley, 42, who participated in the show for eight years as a young man, set out to remake a tradition.

"I started talking to people: 'We have to do something, we have to do something now,' " he said. "Fortunately, there were board members [of the historical association] who thought the same thing."

Backed by $1.5 million in money generated by the tribe's casino, Bradley led a radical makeover of "Unto These Hills." Supporters say the revamped production, written and directed by leading American Indian playwright Hanay Geiogamah, is truer to Cherokee history and traditions.

"Native American people have always been storytellers," said Eddie Swimmer, a Cherokee performer who plays several roles in the new drama, "but history is always told by the conqueror. Now, it's time for us to tell our story."

An estimated 5 million tickets have been sold since the original "Unto These Hills," written by the late Kermit Hunter, a Chapel Hill graduate student, premiered in 1950. But by the summer of 2004, ticket sales had slumped to 44,000 annually.

"Presenting the same play for that long a period of time is really quite unique in America," said Scott Parker, director of the Institute of Outdoor Drama at UNC-Chapel Hill. "Sometimes these shows need to be refreshed and retold."

Bradley said the show was successful into the 1980s but started to decline after the tribe started to compare it with Cherokee history.

"Local people stopped going, they stopped referring people to the show, they stopped bringing their friends ...," Bradley said. "They sort of got ashamed of it."

Last July, the tribe brought in Geiogamah, a professor of American Indian studies and theater at the University of California at Los Angeles, to lead the makeover.

Why the revision

"The old drama ... was replete with historical inaccuracies and an almost nonexistent portrayal of Cherokees and their culture, their music, their humor," Geiogamah said. Hunter's play, plot-driven and melodramatic, centered on the Cherokees' betrayal by the U.S. government and the forced removal of most of the tribe from Western North Carolina to Oklahoma in the late 1830s.

Geiogamah's rewrite follows a similar outline but is told in a less linear fashion. Two mythical Cherokee figures -- Kanati, the Great Hunter, and his wife Selu, the Corn Mother -- survey hundreds of years of history, from the arrival of Spanish gold-hunter Hernando de Soto in Cherokee country to the present day.

Joining Kanati and Selu are Clan Spirits -- similar to the chorus in a Greek tragedy -- who are charged with helping the Cherokees remember their past and make new songs and dances.

Gone are historical inaccuracies, including a depiction of the Cherokee Chief Junaluska saving the life of future President Andrew Jackson -- now attributed to an unknown Cherokee warrior -- and the suspect legend of the Cherokee warrior Tsali, once the centerpiece of the old play's second act.

The old show ended on a tragic note, with Tsali's death and the Cherokees' exile to Oklahoma, The end of the new show focuses on the Eastern Band's survival.

"The removal is presented in the new play as a powerful crescendo moment in the tribe's history, but a tragedy that the tribe actually has surmounted in a way," Geiogamah said.

Bradley said his goals in remaking the show were historic accuracy, cultural accuracy and more performance opportunities for Cherokees. In the old show, only about a quarter of the cast were Cherokee, and it was routine for whites to play Indian parts. Now 60 of 75 cast members are Cherokee.

So far, the revision seems to have spurred new interest; attendance was up 44 percent in the early weeks of this summer's run.

Jimmy Hamilton, 67, of Lexington, Ky., saw the old play about a dozen times. His parents first took him when he was 13. After watching the new show, Hamilton said he prefers the old version.

"It may not have been accurate, but it was effective," he said.

Swimmer, 45, who performs as a traditional hoop dancer, understands the mixed feelings.

"I liked the old show myself," he said. "It was very exciting. It was a drama." But the revision, he said, offers a truer depiction of his tribe.

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