click to enlarge - Erik Esckilsen
- Maren Langdon Spillane and Dominic Spillane in front of Northfield's Gray Building
2020 was an inauspicious year to launch a theater company and education program. But what could have been a false start for Northfield-based Dirt Road Theater became an exercise in resourcefulness for cofounders Maren Langdon Spillane and Dominic Spillane.
Both active in New York City's theater scene before relocating to Vermont in 2014, the couple started Dirt Road in the United Church of Northfield's basement. When lockdown arrived, pivoting to virtual acting classes and performances was relatively easy.
Their podcast, "Fairies and Dragons, Ponies and Knights," however, was out-of-the-box creative. The episodic fantasy series aimed at the under-12 crowd combines virtual gatherings and Dominic's original storytelling informed by kids themselves (he and Maren are raising two of them), plus musical accompaniment and guest artists.
Now that live performances and classes have resumed everywhere, Dirt Road is making another bold move. As of October, the enterprise occupies a second-floor room in Northfield's Gray Building.
According to the Digital Vermont history website, the tall edifice with a cupola went up in 1876 as the Northfield Graded School, earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988 and functioned as an elementary school into the 1990s. Perched on a hill along North Main Street, it cuts an imposing figure in the flat winter light. Nevertheless, the Gray Building is a beacon of welcome in the small community by the banks of the Dog River, housing tenants such as the Rainbow Gardens early childhood program.
"Everyone in Northfield is in love with the Gray Building," said Rebecca Pearish, youth librarian at the local Brown Public Library, whose daughter, Aurora, has taken classes with Dirt Road since before the pandemic. "It's a magical and nostalgic space," she added.
The Spillanes call their rooms the Gray Space, a nod to the building's name and to the undefined potential of 900 square feet of wooden floorboards framed by tall windows and high ceilings. In addition to using the venue for Dirt Road theater productions and classes, they want to throw the doors wide open to community uses such as yoga, dance and movie screenings.
"If Northfield wants a Twister night in here — great, we'll do it," Maren said. "It's clear to me that there's a need for events, particularly in the winter months."
On a recent Sunday afternoon, the former classroom crackled with the energy of six local teens playing improv games. According to Maren, theater education is at Dirt Road's core. While the company also offers classes for adults, kids are the focus.
"We have the ability and the privilege to give them the freedom that they can't have within the school structure," she said. "They say such beautiful things sometimes about how theater is the only place where they feel themselves or they feel safe."
Dominic concurred: "[We're] trying to show kids what theater can be, more so than what it is," he said. Classes and camps anchor the endeavor financially, although Maren noted that Dirt Road uses a sliding fee scale to make its programs accessible.
While the couple are eager to stage shows in the Gray Space, they plan to keep their programming flexible in the short term. "We're hesitant to go the season route, because then you're really committed to producing work on a regular basis," Dominic said. "Whereas, at least at the moment, we like being able to produce things when we're excited about them."
The first priority, he added, is the venue itself. To introduce the community to the Gray Space and begin raising funds for renovations, Dirt Road will produce two nights of theater on Saturday and Sunday, December 16 and 17. Both evenings feature the company's young players in "Dear World," a retrospective arrangement of scenes and songs from the past three years of youth performances. Then the lights go up on "Customer Service 2.0," billed as an updated version of the troupe's March 2023 sketch comedy show, which sold out Montpelier's Savoy Theater.
After the fundraising event, which the Spillanes hope will boost the campaign toward $20,000 for the first round of renovations, the Dirt Road principals and a crew of skilled volunteers will begin transforming the open space. For both practical and aesthetic reasons, they anticipate a venue more conducive to intimate theater than to big, splashy productions. It's a theatrical mode familiar to the couple from their New York City days and their time in Vermont.
In September 2022, the company produced the world premiere of Montpelier playwright Tamar Cole's The Ties That Bind at the First Church in Barre, Universalist, which had recently been converted into a community space not unlike what the Spillanes imagine for the Gray Space.
As Pearish noted, Dirt Road isn't starting from square one, having maintained community connections along its bumpy journey. "I think that our community is ready to embrace that. Probably this has been simmering in our community for a while," she said. "Having people who are already really invested to anchor the space ... will help."
Maren sees another vital resource at hand. "We're scrappy," she said.