CARY - Cotton and Evalina left little of themselves in Cary's collective memory - not their last names, not their birthdates. There's only a painting and a caption.

Doris Meekins painted the couple in the early 1900s as they delivered mail in Cary.

"They were passed over by history, but there's this little fragment of them in this painting," said Ian Finley, 31.

This weekend, Finley and his colleagues will reanimate that fragment of history.

Burning Coal Theatre Company, a professional group, is producing "A Walk Through the Pages of History," an original, distinctively formatted play that will run Friday through Sunday during Herbfest.

The play is a living diorama, with costumed actors stationed at outposts along Academy Street. Each professional will portray a historical figure who lived between 1880 and 1940.

Groups of audience members will walk about a mile total, starting at the Page-Walker House and turning around at the new Cary Arts Center.

The characters range from the obscure, like Cotton and Evalina, to the well-documented, including James Templeton, who was once Cary's preeminent doctor.

Samantha Corey, a 23-year-old who grew up in Cary and works at Burning Coal, wrote the grant that won the project about $5,000 in matching funds from the town. The company puts on similar historical theater in Raleigh, but had not expanded the idea beyond the city.

"I knew that I wanted to do something in Cary that was different," Corey said. "I've lived in Cary from age 8 and I was never taught any kind of history on it."

She and Finley rooted through history books and oral recordings, seeking the sometimes obscure characters that will dot Academy Street in the production.

They found stories and facts that may have disappeared if not for the work of earlier historians.

For those who look, Cary's history exists even on the front steps of town hall, in the Page-Walker House and in the tiny shed left from an old estate.

The play was an education for its creators, too.

Corey was surprised by the influence and respect that some black families garnered in early Cary during the decades after the Civil War, she said.

The play mentions Arch Arrington, the town's first black elected official, who held considerable influence as early as the 1920s.

Finley found himself drawn to medicine's role in the town's history, in places like Ashworth's Drugs and people like Templeton. Templeton helped unify the early town as he made house calls to the rich and poor, Finley said.

Finley hopes the troupe's work will illuminate Cary's past in a brand new way.

"We're not documentarians - that work has been done remarkably well," he said. "Our job is to bring it to life, to make it fascinating, to make it drama. We're not teaching a class; we're telling a story."