Joel Williams sat about three rows back in the Red Door Theater Thursday night watching the play, “Promises.”

He heard the laughter of the audience. He felt the stillness and the quiet anticipation as the story unfolded and his heart swelled when members of the audience responded as if the story were their own.

“The more I watch it; the more I like it,” said Williams, who was more than two years in the writing of “Promises.”

Williams doesn’t consider himself a playwright. He is a professor of theater arts at Appalachian State in Boone, North Carolina and is a seasoned director. Play writing is new to him but, in writing “Promises,” he discovered the rich history of a place and the people who felt a deep sense of belonging to the land.

“Promises” deals with love, loss, betrayal, reconciliation and promises, both kept and broken.

Williams said he was fascinated by the idea of a “road to nowhere” and how it could be the avenue for telling the story of the people who were forced to leave their homes in order for the Fontana Dam to be built. The road was built to provide the residents who gave up their land for the Fontana Dam project access to their ancestral gravesites. But the road was never completed as the government “promised.”

The “road to nowhere” led Williams on a journey that would wind and weave the threads of history and fiction so closely together that the two became as one.

“I had no outline for the play,” Williams said. “As I began to do the research for the play, I became more and more fascinated by the story of the displacement of residents who gave up their land for the Fontana Dam project and how they worked so hard to maintain the land where now the graves are the only evidence that anybody lived there.”

As Williams delved deeply into the research of the Fontana Dam project and, as he developed the storyline for his play, “Promises,” the more he realized how the lives of the people there were tied to the cemeteries.

To tell the story in true fashion, he said it had to be told through the traditions of the people.

“As I learned more about the rich historic fabric of the people, the story began to write itself,” he said. “The pieces just started to fit together.”

The underlying theme of “Promises” is that “love is the promise of forgiveness.” The theme runs throughout the play, which takes place on Hazel Creek on Decoration Day, the fourth Sunday in June and says to all, “remember I was here.”

The play has been recognized nationally by the American Association of Community Theaters.

“Promises” will continue with performances at 7:30 tonight and at 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the Red Door Theater in Union Springs. Tickets are $15 and are available by calling (334) 738-8687.