01/18/2002

Theater Community Restoration

Grassroots success in theater restoration makes it possible for communities to keep history and the arts alive in large venues and small. Barbara Cantwell wrote to me about the rise and fall and rise again of an old theater in Sharon, CT, now open again to enthusiastic audiences.

A rose by any other name
By Barbara Kirwin Cantwell

After 50 years of financial woes, the historic Sharon Playhouse is once again alive and thriving. The Tri-State Center for the Arts (TriArts), previously located in Pine Plains, NY, is winding up another successful season at the playhouse. And it appears its goal of purchasing the theatre is close to becoming a reality. Financially supported by lovers of the arts, TriArts is composed of hard-working community volunteers, local talent and a scattering of imported equity actors.

That same combination prevailed at Sharon's first playhouse, a 175-seat converted stable, launched in 1950 by the Broadway actors Helen Kingstead and Gerald Cornell (who owned a home in Sharon), plus Walter Winburn.

In 1954, a coalition of well-to-do supporters bailed out the financially struggling playhouse by financing the construction of a $100,000 barn theatre. But disaster struck during the 1955 season when incessant rains triggered such severe floods that the state of Connecticut was declared a disaster area.

Low attendance and high expenses forced the players to once again seek a solution to save the theatre. Benefactors of the arts formed the Sharon Creative Arts Foundation (SCAF), enabling the Sharon Playhouse to survive until 1972, when, in a further attempt to salvage it, patrons initiated a trust group, raising enough money to resuscitate the dying enterprise.

Bettie Snyder, a resident of Sharon and a former president of SCAF, says that going to the playhouse in the 1960's and 1970's was quite an event.

"I started going to the theatre about 1960," she says. "People got all dressed up. The men wore jackets and the women wore nice dresses. The children's theatre was fabulous, and teenagers fought to get jobs as ushers just to be around the place. But that fell apart in the late 1970's and early 1980's, when the Board increased to 26 people [and was controlled by weekenders]."

Two theatre enthusiasts, Nelson Slater (now deceased) and Marilyn Reagan, bailed out the playhouse by personally guaranteeing a $139,000 loan from the Salisbury Bank & Trust. To aid in meeting the payments, SCAF's 1986 Board of Directors voted to offer a two-year lease to the University of Miami. A disastrous decision, according to Ms. Snyder.

"The University's goal was not to produce quality theatre, but to recruit students," she says. "The staff was on vacation up here. They only came to have fun."

In 1989, SCAF president, Ms. Snyder, launched a successful season by hiring local professionals and bringing the playhouse back to the community.

However, in 1990, the Foundation voted to rent the theatre to a group of aspiring actors from Tufts University in Boston. According to Ms. Snyder they left the place in a shambles.

The following March the Sharon Playhouse, its associated buildings and 3.5 acres of land were offered for sale for $275,000. The unique circumstances of the history of the premises was the instrumental factor for a judicial foreclosure action in August, 1991. Bidding $235,000 (the calculated debt figure) against the only other registered bid of $75,000, note holders Marilyn Reagan and Nelson Slater found themselves the reluctant new owners of The Sharon Playhouse.

For the next three years the theatre remained dark. But in 1994, a Manhattan production company, Clocktower Realty, bought the playhouse and set up a separate entity, Sharon Stage. Ms. Reagan said she and Slater agreed to accept an initial down payment for the property and interest-only payments for three years, when the balance was due in full. For the first two seasons the playhouse struggled to survive, but by the end of 1995 it went belly up.

"When Sharon Stage came in they solicited advice, then very quickly chose not to follow any of it," says playwright Lonnie Carter, who was on the board of SCAF during the 1982-1983 season. "I think they were whistling 'Dixie.' They were in our face all the time asking us for money. They got us to put our children's names on the backs of the theatre seats and then, without telling us, they auctioned them off. They were everywhere, then suddenly they were nowhere. You couldn't find them."

But despite its history of financial woes, the Sharon Playhouse is once again attracting enthusiastic audiences. TriArts' recipe for wooing patrons is multi-leveled, according to board member Gordon Heyworth. Generous amounts of hard work, contagious excitement, and endless energy combined with choice children's programs, quality plays and musicals, dedicated volunteers and a smattering of professionals (director, set designer and choreographer) appear to be the prime ingredients that have spelled success for TriArts. Gordon believes that success is measured in people's feelings for excitement. TriArts' audiences experience that excitement when the players' contagious enthusiasm spills out over the footlights.

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LINKS:

• The theater as hero
• The Woodward Opera House: Oldest Authentic 19th Century Theater in the US
• SoNo Revitalization

Please send questions or comments to bbruno@snet.net.