In Vermont, you can watch a play while sheep graze just outside the theater or be part of the cast that puts on a show on a town hall stage. The plays might be so popular that the audience nearly knows the lines, too, or so provocative that director and cast have no idea if a production will work. And every performance is started from scratch, live and unrepeatable.
Each of Vermont’s community theaters employs its own distinctive approach to attracting audiences and participants, proving that there’s no single template for putting on shows with little money and lots of enthusiasm. Community theater is a complex, evolving organism; it may even go dormant for a while and then spring back to life.
The success of a community theater group could be measured by its longevity, level of participation, box office receipts or quality of work. But the deeper truth is that a community theater succeeds when its community believes it does. These productions are by and for the people watching and staging them.
While all theater takes collaboration, community theater might be the ultimate expression of social cooperation. It doesn’t necessarily require a dedicated theater space with lighting, sets and costumes, but it does need spectators. Read on for a sampling of this summer’s shows from six community theaters.
The Very Model
Unadilla Theatre, East Calais
A theater celebrating its 40th anniversary is not that big a deal; Vermont has a few dating back to the 1920s or ’30s. But a theater guided that long by one artistic director, reflecting his theatrical tastes, idiosyncratic location and single-handed ability to fix things — sometimes during dress rehearsal — is a rare accomplishment.
Bill Blachly, 99, started Unadilla Theatre in 1983 with a production of Uncle Vanya. Anton Chekhov remains his favorite playwright, and Blachly will direct the East Calais theater’s fifth production of the show this summer.
Some cast members have been performing at Unadilla for decades, too. And a loyal audience willing to drive down a dirt road to see a show is another reason the theater will present its 177th production this year. Blachly won’t rule out a 2024 season — but, he said, “At 99, it’s a little hard to make predictions about the future.”
“If the purpose is only to make money, what’s the point?” Bill Blachly
Unadilla’s repertoire is distinctive. Most every season, a Gilbert & Sullivan opera plays to full houses and gives an elaborately costumed cast all the witty lyrics they can handle. This year’s offering is The Pirates of Penzance, about an idealistic young man apprenticed to a genteel band of pirates, featuring the patter colossus “The Major General’s Song.” Erik Kroncke and Mary Jane Austin will direct a cast of trained singers with amateur choral support; the pair will also stage Mozart’s The Magic Flute in August.
Blachly chooses plays based on artistic merit. “If the purpose is only to make money, what’s the point?” he said. “People ought to be stretched.” Unadilla has presented the work of Samuel Beckett, Joe Orton, Tom Stoppard, Sam Shepard and Athol Fugard.
Shakespeare is also a mainstay. This year, a full complement of fairies, lovers, lords and rude mechanicals will perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Jeanne Beckwith.
Blachly added a second theater in 2011, and two shows play on most July and August nights. The setting is beautiful, and the stars shine especially brightly in the Vermont night above Blachly’s fields.
“It’s a great place for a picnic and to see funny animals,” Blachly said. He’s referring to the long-haired Scottish Highland cattle grazing on the hillside, but there’s a lot that’s funny onstage, too, thanks to a band of steadfast Unadilla actors.
Pure Imagination
The Valley Players, Waitsfield
This summer’s musical from the Valley Players is Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka, and the group didn’t choose it just because it appeals to a wide audience — it’s also a reason to assemble a big cast of all ages. Ruth Ann Pattee, the musical’s artistic director and choreographer, noted that “This is true community theater, involving kids, teens, adults and seniors.”
A former theater educator, Pattee joined the Valley Players in 1996. This musical’s cast of 21 is “about the maximum our stage can hold,” she said, a literal example of the group’s interest in including everyone in the community. With music director Michael Halloran conducting a five-piece band, the group will stage the songs made popular by the 1971 Gene Wilder film.
Founded in 1979, the Valley Players now owns its Waitsfield theater space, which volunteers have made adaptable over the years. Today, the company presents three or four shows each year and hosts the Vermont Playwrights Circle’s TenFest, which has the side benefit of introducing new actors to the Valley Players. For 35 years, the group’s annual variety show, Cabin Fever Follies, has brightened the Mad River Valley’s mud season with storytelling, music and standup comedy.
Steel Reserve
Island Stage, North Hero
Island Stage was founded in 2014 to produce theater in the Champlain Islands with the long-term hope of establishing a permanent venue. Most shows have been performed at the North Hero Community Hall, but this summer the group will produce the funny and heartwarming Steel Magnolias at the Black Box Theater at Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center in Burlington. Performing in the city expands the group’s potential viewers. Still, original founder Noni Stuart said, “It left us in a quandary: How to serve our island audience?”
For now, Island Stage is offering discounted tickets to islanders, but the company’s future is uncertain. Stuart, the only remaining founder, will leave this year. “It would be an ideal time for anyone with a passion for theater and a love for the islands to step forward,” she said.
Many community theater groups struggle to build and maintain a band of volunteers. For Island Stage, this transition could be a crossroads or merely a bump in the road.
In Magnolias, Stuart will play the audaciously rude Ouiser Boudreaux, part of a cast of semiprofessionals. “The play portrays friendship and community, exactly what we seek to strengthen in the islands,” she said.
Making theOld New Again
Vermont Repertory Theatre, Williston
For its inaugural production, Vermont Repertory Theatre offers Shakespeare’s first comedy, the pun-stuffed, slapstick-driven The Comedy of Errors. The play is 400 years old, but the story of two sets of twins separated at birth remains a silly showcase for mistaken identity that destabilizes the characters and keeps an audience laughing.
Artistic director Mike Fidler will re-create the simplicity of 16th-century performance by staging the play in a 250-year-old barn at the Isham Family Farm using period costumes and no lighting effects. He described the production as rekindling the comedy with contemporary social awareness, saying, “The barn will become a modern Elizabethan innyard, a gathering place for our eclectic community.”
Fidler has directed shows in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and locally for Burlington’s Lyric Theatre. He said he sees Vermont Rep as a fringe theater, a company with professional experience and high artistic standards that occupies a place between commercial and community theater.
The Shakespeare production defines the group’s mission. “We want to bring classic theater into a contemporary spotlight and demonstrate its relevance to a modern, young audience,” Fidler said.
Words of Wisdom
Lamoille County Players, Hyde Park
Patty Jacob, Lamoille County Players board member and frequent show participant, will codirect the company’s July production, Let It Be: A Musical Celebration of the Beatles, with music director Kenny Grenier. Then she’ll hand the directing hat to another volunteer for the next production.
A seven-piece band supports the song and dance, but this isn’t a Beatles impersonation show. It’s a look at American life in the 1960s, when anyone might start singing a Beatles song, from partygoers to protesters to soldiers in Vietnam.
“Many of our cast members are baby boomers. It’s the music of our lives,” Jacob said. The 32-member cast is an ensemble without a star, and the show doesn’t rely on a plot to move from “Yesterday” to “Help!” The music itself is the excuse for a 25-song revue of the Beatles catalog.
The Lamoille County Players perform at the Hyde Park Opera House, a 1912 Georgian Revival hall with a superb painted theater curtain. The group holds open auditions, and anyone can propose a show. Regular performers are a cross section of the community, including locals and folks who “feel it’s worth the drive to be part of something special,” Jacob said.
Outside the Box
BarnArts Center for the Arts, Barnard
BarnArts Center for the Arts presents a year-round schedule of plays, principally in the Barnard Town Hall with winter forays to Woodstock or Pomfret. For the past eight years, it’s staged a play outdoors in Barnard around the summer solstice. This year’s offering is Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, an ebullient play of ideas that’s really about human nature, not to mention humans in nature.
Stoppard’s raw material includes calculus, Lord Byron and literary rivalries, but these specifics are merely fuel for the interactions of a set of characters living in 1800 and another set who appear in the same grand English country house 180 years later. An exhilarating kind of time travel contrasts some messy love stories and explores one other persistent passion: the love of knowledge.
Director Christopher Peirce will use the outdoor staging “to take risks,” he said. “Several of Stoppard’s themes — entropy, chaos theory, the conflict between humanity and the natural world — are readily reflected in nature.”
Linda Treash, BarnArts’ executive director and producer of Arcadia, said, “There is a big advantage to picking plays that are ambitious. I’m proud of having a strong cadre of actors committed to BarnArts, and I know it’s because of the shows we do.”
It’s Showtime
The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare, Vermont Repertory Theatre: Thursday and Friday, May 25 and 26, 7 p.m.; and Saturday, May 27, 2 and 7 p.m., at the barn at Isham Family Farm in Williston. $10-25; free for youth under 16. vermontrep.com
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, BarnArts Center for the Arts: Friday and Saturday, June 16 and 17 and 23 and 24, 7 p.m.; and Sunday, June 18 and 25, 4 p.m., at Feast & Field, 1525 Royalton Turnpike in Barnard. $15-20. barnarts.org
The Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert & Sullivan, Unadilla Theatre: June 29 to July 15: Thursday through Saturday, 7:30 p.m.; and Sunday, July 9, 2:30 p.m., at Unadilla Theatre in East Calais. $15-25. unadilla.org
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, Unadilla Theatre: June 29 to July 15: Thursday through Saturday, 7:30 p.m.; and Sunday, July 2, 2:30 p.m., at Unadilla Theatre in East Calais. $15-25. unadilla.org
Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka by Tim McDonald, Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, the Valley Players: June 29 to July 16: Thursday through Saturday, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, 4 p.m., at Valley Players Theater in Waitsfield. $18-22. valleyplayers.com
Steel Magnolias by Robert Harling, Island Stage: July 6 to 9: Thursday through Sunday, 7:30 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 2:30 p.m., at the Black Box Theater, Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center, in Burlington. $15-35. islandstage.org
Let It Be: A Musical Celebration of the Beatles by Maggie Pitts, Lamoille County Players: July 20 to 23 and 27 to 30: Thursday through Saturday, 7 p.m., and Sunday, 2 p.m., at the Hyde Park Opera House. $15-20. lcplayers.com
Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov, Unadilla Theatre: July 20 to August 6: Thursday through Saturday, 7:30 p.m.; and Sunday, August 6, 2:30 p.m., at Unadilla Theatre in East Calais. $15-25. unadilla.org
The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Unadilla Theatre:
Wednesday, August 9; Friday, August 11; Sunday, August 13; and Thursday, August 17, 7:30 p.m., at Unadilla Theatre in East Calais. $15-25. unadilla.org
The original print version of this article was headlined “Playing Favorites | From Shakespeare to the Beatles, Vermont’s community theaters offer a variety of summer fun”
Related Stories
And the Living Is Easy: Unwind with the Summer Preview
At 99, Bill Blachly Looks Back on 40 Years of Unadilla Theatre
This article appears in May 17-23, 2023.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
