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View ProfilesPublished December 13, 2023 at 10:00 a.m.
When Keisha Luce invites nationally touring artists to perform at the Highland Center for the Arts in Greensboro, she's sometimes met with bewilderment.
"They're like, 'How far is that from New York?' 'How far is that from Boston?' Yeah, it's pretty far," said Luce, the center's executive director, of the rural Northeast Kingdom town with roughly 800 year-round residents. "The nearest airport is going to be a few hours away."
The phrase "rural performing arts" may seem like an oxymoron elsewhere, but in Vermont, it's not. Nonprofit performing arts centers span the state, from the Flynn in Burlington to Seven Stars Arts Center in Sharon, population 1,560.
Week after week, these venues bring world-class artists to the kinds of towns where the cashier at the local convenience store knows every customer by name. In the process of hosting the likes of the Bulgarian Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra at Catamount Arts in St. Johnsbury or the Swedish folk'appella group Kongero at the Highland Center, small-town theaters not only draw people out of their homes to share in live performances, they help fill tables at local restaurants, boost other area businesses and transform drive-by towns into cultural destinations.
"When they bring 800 people into town, you're talking about literally tens of thousands of dollars flowing into our local economy just for a single event," said Jody Fried, executive director of Catamount Arts.
That's not hyperbole. According to the U.S. Arts & Economic Prosperity study published in October, Vermont nonprofit arts and culture organizations generated $158.6 million in economic activity last year and attracted 1.4 million attendees, three-quarters of whom live locally.
"The economic impact is really significant," Fried said.
But in a city or the sticks, running a successful nonprofit arts center isn't easy. Susan Evans McClure, executive director of the Vermont Arts Council, said performing arts organizations still haven't fully recovered their audiences from the pandemic. Ticket sales are never enough to cover operating costs, she said, and organizations often find themselves stretched thin between financial pressures and their artistic and educational missions.
In rural areas, those issues are magnified. A small population means fewer potential local hires for staff positions. Unable to rely exclusively on nearby residents to consistently fill a theater, the programming has to be alluring enough to make patrons feel it's worth a trek across the state. And attracting national talent to venues off the beaten path isn't easy: Vermont's rural towns often lack a single hotel.
"The financial pressures [on] these organizations are real," McClure said. "The people who work there are wearing 10 different hats."
As winter programming heats up at venues around the state, Seven Days visited three performing arts centers in rural Vermont to discover how, despite the challenges these areas pose, the show goes on.
Randolph is the heart of Vermont — geographically speaking, anyway. The quaint town of about 4,700 people is located precisely in the center of the state. It also serves as the commercial center for the farming communities that surround it in Orange County.
It's not the first place you'd expect to see former Rolling Stones' backup singer Lisa Fischer.
And yet the Grammy Award winner came to Randolph in November to perform at the Chandler Center for the Arts — a two-story, Romanesque-style concrete building with arched entrances that houses a historic 575-seat theater. Built in 1906, the building was a gift of colonel Albert B. Chandler, a Randolph native who served as a telegraph operator to president Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. It's been renovated several times since then, but the theater's wooden chairs atop a sloped wooden floor still give the hall a colonial, antique feel.
"I'm booking some things that have national recognition," executive director Chloe Powell said. "I'm getting Chandler on the map so people know to reach out."
The Chandler hosts 40 to 50 events per year. Powell, who took the reins at the center in March, said she's making use of her network from prior jobs. She previously worked as an agent for musicians and oversaw music bookings for the nonprofit BarnArts Center for the Arts and the Feast & Field music festival, both in her native Barnard.
Finding the right person to lead the Chandler hasn't been easy: The center has churned through seven executive directors over the past 10 years.
Powell attributes the run of resignations to the sometimes unrealistic demands placed on leaders at small organizations. Directors at venues such as the Chandler are often in charge of everything from booking to marketing to development — duties that merit their own positions at larger centers.
"It's a really big job, and it can be overwhelming," Powell said. She added that the Chandler has hired a new development director to help with fundraising and a full-time staffer in charge of marketing. She hopes those hires will help her buck the trend. The 38-year-old said she wants to serve as executive director until her retirement.
Powell keeps ticket prices low — most Chandler shows start at just $10. While that affordability may help fill seats, it doesn't cover the costs of operating the theater. To break even, the center makes up the difference through donations, sponsorships from local businesses and grants from organizations such as the New England Foundation for the Arts. In 2019, more than 60 percent of the Chandler's roughly $710,000 in revenue came from contributions and grants.
"Maybe we could or should raise our prices," Powell said, "but it's really important to us that we're accessible."
Community programming also means getting kids involved. Last year, about 30 students put on a production of Grease for the Chandler's annual youth musical. And visiting artists will often put on workshops at local schools.
Powell is always on the lookout for creative ways to boost revenue. For example, she rents out the Chandler for conferences, noting that its central location is ideal for events expected to draw attendees from all corners of the state.
For locals, the Chandler provides a third space in which to break bread, socialize and enjoy a show. Randolph residents Kathy and Michael Larkin said having access to performing arts through the Chandler influenced their decision to move to Randolph from Burlington. They fell in love with the town after attending the Chandler's annual New World Festival of Celtic and French Canadian music.
"Almost everything the Chandler does is going to guarantee you a nice night," Kathy said.
Lucas Battey also sees the Chandler as central to Randolph. He's the co-owner of Short Notice, a restaurant about two blocks south of the theater on North Main Street. He said he sometimes sees 60 percent more business than average on nights the Chandler has a big show.
"It's creating traffic for the town, bringing people from other parts of the state that don't necessarily have a reason to come to Randolph," Battey said. "It's bringing recognition to the town it wouldn't necessarily get otherwise."
Putney is a town where history is alive. Located about 20 minutes north of Brattleboro, its residents grocery shop at the same Putney General Store that's been in business since 1796. Across the street is a white building with prominent windows, green shutters and an imposing steeple that dates back to 1841.
Once the home of the Putney Federated Church, today that building houses Next Stage Arts, a performing arts center and community gathering space. In 2011, residents raised more than $1 million to transform the deteriorating church into a state-of-the-art venue. The completed space with a 200-seat theater opened in 2016.
Executive director Keith Marks said he feels added social responsibility as an arts and culture leader in a town of about 2,600 people who are almost 96 percent white.
"As a skinny white kid growing up in the burbs, I owe so much to arts and culture for bringing me deeper into understanding what the experience is like for somebody other than myself," he said. "It gives you a richness of human experience that would be challenging to experience otherwise."
As a teenager in Daytona Beach, Fla., Marks got into Jamaican ska music, a genre that combines Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. He said he owes performing arts venues for exposing him to this genre of music.
Now, Marks makes a point of bringing diverse performers to Putney, with about two shows per week. Earlier this month, César Lerner and Marcello Moguilevsky — a duo that plays a fusion of klezmer, tango, jazz and South American folk music — came all the way from Buenos Aires, Argentina. In January, Next Stage will host artist Lonnie Holley, whose work is inspired by his experience growing up Black in Jim Crow-era Alabama.
"For me, arts are a portal to otherness," Marks said. "Culture is an opportunity for us to enter worlds that we may not be invited into otherwise."
Marks said convincing acclaimed artists to perform in Putney at an affordable price is often about networking. In 2022, two members of Talking Heads played the theater because of a friendship with a member of Next Stage's board of directors, Dorothy Porter.
Marks can keep ticket prices low by avoiding bookings on Friday or Saturday nights. For example, the Ukrainian folk music quartet DakhaBrakha performed at Next Stage on a Thursday afternoon, a pit stop on their tour from Montréal to New York. On a Saturday night, Marks said, DakhaBrakha's fees would have been cost-prohibitive. Earning roughly $300,000 in revenue in 2020, Next Stage made about $50,000 more than it spent.
"Whenever I'm talking to artists or agents, I'm very transparent about what we can do and what we can't do," Marks said. "There's plenty of talent in New York and Boston and further afield. The question is, do the stars align? Do the finances work?"
Accommodating artists once they arrive poses a challenge, due to the high cost of local hotels. Marks has hosted artists at his house, put them up in Airbnb rentals and had community members volunteer to share their homes.
Last month, French Canadian singer-songwriter Geneviève Racette played guitar and sang about love, breakups and sobriety to an audience of about 30 people at Next Stage. She told the crowd she loved her accommodations — an Airbnb in the woods without Wi-Fi that helped her unplug — though she wasn't previously familiar with the town.
"How do you say it? Poot-knee?" Racette asked the crowd. "Puht-knee!" an audience member yelled back.
The Highland Center for the Arts sometimes draws more than twice as many people to its events as there are residents in the town.
A summer vacation destination for second-home owners, Greensboro drops in population from a few thousand in the summer to about 800 in the winter. Yet the center's German-style winter market in December usually draws close to 2,000 attendees, according to Keisha Luce, the executive director.
To attract people from across the state, Luce tries to come up with inventive programming no one else offers. At the center's annual Curds & Curling event in February, participants enjoy cheesy refreshments and compete in curling, using a wheel of cheddar as the curling stone. From January to March, the center runs its Open Air Gallery, an outdoor art show where viewers ski or snowshoe along a trail to reach different exhibits.
"Being a destination location, your programming has to shine enough that you're going to draw people in from an hour or two hours away," said Luce, who hosts events almost every weekend. "We've got to remind everyone of that special quality of going to see live arts."
The center, which tracks data on its attendees, attracts residents from 52 Vermont towns, according to Luce. That includes Burlington, located about an hour and a half away.
Opened in 2017, the $14 million facility was funded by a gift from the elusive businessman Andrew Brown, a longtime Greensboro resident who now lives in London and usually remains anonymous in his philanthropic ventures. The 26,400-square-foot building includes a round auditorium inspired by the Globe Theatre in London, an art gallery, office space and views of the herb farm next door.
"You don't really have facilities like this in such small corners of the world," Luce said. "It's such a beautiful gift that [Brown] gave to the community."
The Northeast Kingdom town near Caspian Lake earned the nickname "Deansboro" in the early 1900s because so many deans from Princeton University had summer homes there. Today, Greensboro's abundance of performing arts is part of the attraction for summer residents: Bread and Puppet Theater, Circus Smirkus, Vermont Vaudeville and the Craftsbury Chamber Players are all nearby.
But while the center's most popular events draw crowds, sustaining business year-round can be a challenge. The HCA Café, housed within the Highland Center building, used to be a full-service restaurant with brunch, lunch and dinner. But the restaurant closed during the pandemic and hasn't reopened. Luce said it had always struggled to do business — especially during the winter, when Greensboro's population shrinks.
"It's hard anywhere, the restaurant business," Luce said. "It's really hard in a rural location."
Now, the Highland Center uses the café to supplement events rather than as a standalone restaurant. For example, in the summertime, a chef bakes some of the desserts featured on the reality competition show "The Great British Bake Off" and hosts a tasting of sweets and tea in a tent outside.
Where do artists stay in Greensboro? The Highland Lodge has just 24 rooms, Luce said, and local Airbnbs always seem to be booked. The July floods destroyed Inn by the River, a motel in nearby Hardwick, and the owners have no plans to rebuild. Luce said she sometimes has no choice but to send performers to stay in St. Johnsbury, 45 minutes away.
"We're really, really pressed for housing," Luce said. She added that Greensboro has "a hard time housing people who live locally" — not to mention visitors.
But what Greensboro lacks in endowed resources, it makes up for in community involvement. A retired local principal emceed Curds & Curling. At the center's second annual Fairy Festival — which drew close to 1,000 people in July — a local woman volunteered her white horse to wear a horn and act as the unicorn.
On slower nights, regulars keep the space alive. Along with about 30 other people, Albany resident Elizabeth Chadwick trekked to the Highland Center on a recent Thursday night to watch the psychological thriller The Prestige and eat an Argentinean feast — part of a monthly dinner and movie series featuring food from around the world. Chadwick said the strength of the community is what sustains the rural arts.
"If you told me to live in New York City [with] art just right out my doorstep, I would probably say no," Chadwick said. "The trade-off is that the art here is a little bit more beautiful. There's soul behind it."
The original print version of this article was headlined "Farm to Theater | Vermont's rural performing arts centers thrive despite unique challenges"
Tags: Performing Arts, Highland Center for the Arts, Chandler Center for the Arts, Next Stage Arts Project
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