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The Jamestown Corporation produced The Common Glory, a Paul Green symphonic drama, nearly every summer of its thirty year existence. Staged at the Lake Matoaka amphitheater on the campus of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, The Common Glory told the story of the American Revolution from Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" speech to the American victory at Yorktown. In 1957, 1958, and 1964, the Jamestown Corporation also produced The Founders, another drama written by Paul Green which depicted the struggles of the early Jamestown settlers and the lives of John Smith, Pocahontas, and John Rolfe.
Funded initially by private donations and state grant money, the success of the Jamestown Corporation in the late 1940s and early 1950s owed much to the burgeoning tourist traffic in Williamsburg and to the monetary support of its trustees and friends. In its opening season, 1946,more than 90,000 persons saw The Common Glory. The drama was widely acclaimed. The New York Times reviewer wrote that the play created a" mood of reverence and wonder," and The Associated Press noted that it "flips the pages of history...and brings to light beneath a starlit sky the stirring events that welded America into a nation."
In all but two of its first ten years from 1946 to 1956, The Common Glory made a profit, with attendance averaging near 80,000 per year. Beginning in the late 1950s, though, the tight budget of the Corporation was repeatedly stretched by decreased ticket sales due to inclement weather and a general decline in the popularity of the drama among tourists. Attendance failed to improve through the 1970s, despite the availability of Phi Beta Kappa Hall as a rain location. When the Bicentennial Celebration of 1976 failed to bring in the crowds as expected, the Jamestown Corporation folded and the thirty year run of The Common Glory came to a close.