February Makes
Ten Years
February, 2012, marks an important moment in the history of the Ancram Opera House. That month will be the tenth anniversary of Joan Arnold's purchase of the building. The 4600 square-foot facility needed someone who could revive and maintain the place, develop and produce programs, connect with the local community, and also make it a home. Joan's previous experience as a teacher, a dancer and choreographer, and a manager, all this would be required as never before. When Jim Paul arrived in 2004, he too would bring to the Opera House expertise and labor in stage and audio production, electronic marketing, arts management, and lugging heavy objects.
The place has improved every year. The yoga classes have grown and become a center for community activity, extending even into the winter months. The evening programs have developed depth and character, from a wildly diverse line-up in the beginning to a solid, thematically-unified set of offerings in 2011.
This year began with the annual concert by the Joint Chiefs, a well-attended and upbeat event still building audience with many returnees after five years.
In June the Ancram Opera House led a list of some 60 organizations worldwide that staged a Global Water Dance, highlighting threats to safe drinking water around the world. Joan Arnold and Donna Barrett choreographed the work, presented in a free concert near the Roeliff Jansen Kill.
The annual illuminated literary reading, also a well-attended fixture, this year took on the English children's classic The Wind in the Willows, accompanied by flute and piano. Continuing the water theme, Mole and Rat had their adventures on the Thames.
In July, the annual Baroque concert highlighted world-class sopranos Jolle Greenleaf and Molly Quinn.
Gasland, a film offering in August, is a documentary highlighting the threat to clean water posed by hydrofracturing. Other events included a Drum Circle and Dance and a book party for a local author.
The physical plant was again improved this year, with landscape work on the grounds and the continued renovation of the ground floor, where sparkling new public bathrooms were added last year. This year, we are adding heat, light and new facilities to complete the renovation.
You may have noticed that the big wooden sign has come off the building. The heavy snows last year damaged the sign, and it was in danger of falling. The sign will be back in a new place, refurbished and remounted, lighter and more visible.
2011 was the first year the Opera House closed its season without a loss, thanks to the generosity of local donors. Maybe you appreciated the place and its beneficial existence in Ancram this year. Joan and Jim will continue their work in 2012 and hope that you will join them in supporting and enlivening the Ancram Opera House as it proceeds into a new decade.
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Give Today!
If you are considering making a tax-deductible year-end gift, please contribute to the 2012 Season of evening programming at the Ancram Opera House.
The goal for the coming season is $10,000, which will produce the evening events, pay the performers, and dedicate the summer to keeping the place humming.
The Opera House can't exist without you. We can have more high quality performances in our little town theater, with your help.
Donation Levels
No donation is too small.
If you want to give the Opera House $5, $10, or $20,
it will be gratefully accepted and you will be listed
among our donors.
Larger donation categories are as follows:
$500 and under: Event Sponsor
$501 - $1000: Season Sponsor
$1001 - $2500: Opera House Supporter
$2501 - $5000: Opera House Major Donor
If you'd like to be the sole underwriter
for an Opera House performance in the 2011 season,
the donation level is $2500.
We can work together to find
the right presentation.
To Donate Now,
Click the Wreath:
To donate with a check,
please make it payable to Fractured Atlas,
write Ancram Opera House (3011) in the memo line
and mail to
Ancram Opera House
PO Box 118Ancram, NY 12502 With our thanks, we will mail you an official receipt for your tax records.
For further information about donating,
call (518) 329-7393.
Ancram Opera House Productions is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions in behalf of Ancram Opera House Productions may be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
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My History of
the Ancram Opera House
by Joan Arnold
Until September 11th, 2001, I had never thought to get a place in the country. But when the soul of New York City burned and an acrid odor crept across the East River toward my home in Brooklyn, I considered seeking headquarters out of town. An ad in the New York Times real estate section described an old Grange Hall in the foothills of the Berkshires, three floors, 4600 square feet, "suitable for artist's studio."
I drove up with a friend to see it in mid-October on a sparkling autumn morning, following directions to a town I'd never heard of. When I got my first look at this huge, charming edifice, I gazed at the gold-lettered sign over the entrance. Owner Larry Healy walked me onto the main floor to see its small theatre. The walls were alive with public history and personal memories.
Larry, a very tall carpenter known as "Stretch," was living a loving, single dad life there with his teenage daughter, Cat. They slept in the three-bedroom loft on the top floor, Larry used the daylight basement for work and storage and the main floor's theatre as his wood shop. The sound of music playing highlighted the room's great acoustics, enhanced, I later learned, by the walls and ceiling of hickory wainscoting.
Their living room, with its home entertainment center was oddly pitched on the theater's tiny raked stage. I wondered how someone could tolerate their sofa and TV being on a slight angle, and understood why they'd made that arrangement only after I moved in and tried, with much help and no success, to get a couch up the narrow stairs to the top floor.
A basketball enthusiast who coached the kids in town, Stretch encouraged the very tall Cat to develop her basketball skills. Willing and driven, she practiced on the theatre's hard maple floor, and Stretch gradually moved the basket higher as she grew. He'd also used the theatre for local community benefits and celebrations. The day I first saw it, it served as a wood shop with a touch of faded grandeur, woodworking projects in various stages balanced on rows of saw horses where an eager audience had once been.
People ask me, "Did you immediately fall in love with the Opera House?" Well, no. It was a lovely old building in a charming town, but, as the first place I saw, I assumed that it was but one stop on a long odyssey. Someone else had a binder on it, and it seemed more a curiosity than a possibility.
Still, for me, coming from a long career in dance and movement education, the sight of a big empty room with lovely tall windows and a raked stage was exhilarating. The floor was in perfect shape, with nary a crack or warp. Here and there I saw posters reflecting the changing times: one announced a 1938 July 4th Chicken Supper at the Ancram Grange for 75 cents, another the opening of light opera, another a more recent run of Pump Boys & Dinettes. I could teach here, have room to dance, work with private clients and be in a rural town where music, performance and people's dreams could find a space to flourish.
The other buyer's binder fell through and, on a crisp day in February, 2002, I closed on the Ancram Opera House.
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