By BILL LOCKWOOD
Special to the Eagle Times
BELLOWS FALLS, Vt. — Last spring, Main Street Arts of Saxtons River brought community theater back to the Bellows Falls Opera House with a successful production of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.”
This year, the group returns with the rock musical “Jesus Christ Superstar.”
Director David Stern sees “Superstar” as “a big show, a great show, reputed as one of the 10 best musicals of all time.” Performances are scheduled March 29-31 and April 5-7.
Told from Judas’ point of view, “it is a show that talks about blind following and the place of questioning that feels relevant to me,” Stern said.
The production will be no small affair. Stern says there are more than 75 people involved— 60 in the cast and crews for costumes and scene production.
For a small town arts organization, or even a normal community theater group, mounting a full stage musical is quite a feat.
Everything must be brought in. Taking it to the Opera House can be likened to mounting a one-stop road show.
Until “Sweeney Todd” last year, the Opera house had seen only two such productions since its extensive renovation in 2006 that restored the elegance of the theater and the adjoining Town Hall building.
River Theater Company, a community theater group based in Charlestown, N.H., presented “Phantom of the Opera” for a weekend run that included a gala reopening of the renovated stage in 2007. River Theater returned the next year for a weekend run of “Peter Pan.”
In the intervening years, there have been numerous one-night concerts and events, harkening to an original building’s notoriety as a stop on the old vaudeville circuit.
Then Stern and Main Street Arts brought community theater back to the Opera House last year. Dating from the first silent movies, the Opera House’s primary program has been film. It is one of the last surviving single big-screen movie houses in New England — with five days a week first- and second-run presentations.
After a private movie business closed in the early 1970s, the Rockingham Department of Recreation ran the program under the name New Falls Cinema until the Opera House title was restored as part of the building’s 10- or so-year “restoration” initiated by local residents, who started with the clock and bell in the tower in 1997.
Movie tickets are still only $5, a bargain that has been carried on by the town for the community.
Main Street Arts was established in 1988 in old Odd Fellows Hall in Saxtons River. Funders Mary Hepburn and Karen Lantermann offered classes in a variety of arts to children and adults and their program grew.
The building includes a 100-seat performance space. In 1990, they presented a children’s production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”
In 1998, they presented a community theater production of “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” then their first Broadway musical — “Kiss me Kate” — the next year.
Main Street Arts then began staging mostly Gilbert and Sullivan operettas every spring. Stern, an artist, professional designer, director and theater teacher who is currently artistic director of Main Street Arts, directed the Gilbert and Sullivan “Pirates of Penzance” performance in 2014.
He returned to Broadway musicals with “Les Miserables” the next year. Last year, he and the organization took the bold step of presenting “Sweeney Todd” at the 550-seat Opera House.
“For me and Main Street Arts in general (the goal) is the building of community through the presentation of art,” Stern said. “The Opera House stands as an iconic symbol of the community. It is a location that allows us to reach our community through its size as well as include our community.”
Working around the Opera House scheduled is no easy feat. Rehearsing and building scenery must be done without interferring with the ongoing movie schedule.
Rehearsals and costuming all started after the first of the year at the Saxtons River home base, as did fabrication of platforms and a giant “rock” wall backing in the scene shop.
Scenery, costumes, supplemental lighting and a sound system that will support a rock band and 17 actors with head sets must be moved into the Opera House.
Since most community theater participants have “day jobs,” rehearsals at the Opera House are mostly weekend mornings and on the two nights when there is no movie program. The screen must be lifted and the movie speakers rolled aside each time the stage is used for either rehearsal or set assembly.
Looking at the immensity of the project, Stern says, “I think that by making amazing beautiful things together that we remember we can.”
“People will be thrilled to see it,” Stern said.
Performances are scheduled 7:30 p.m. March 29, 30 and 31 and April 5, 6, and 7. Matinees are slated at 2p.m. March 31 and April 7. Tickets are available through mainstreetarts.org or by calling (802) 869-2960.
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