WESTON — When the Weston Theater Company announced its musical now playing would be a stage adaptation of the 1954 film “White Christmas,” some locals wondered about the seeming incongruity of orchestrating summer with sleigh bells in the snow.
More residents, however, are worried about an even bigger toppling of tradition.
Upon its start in 1937, Vermont’s oldest professional acting troupe performed in a white-pillared playhouse on the postcard green of its namesake Windsor County town of 623 residents.
In 1962, a fire ravaged everything but the building’s Doric columns. In 1973 and 2011, storm overflow from the neighboring West River flooded the cellar of the restored structure. But come hell or high water, the company always reopened in keeping with the theatrical credo “the show must go on.”
Then on July 10, 2023, a record downpour swallowed up the playhouse’s basement and first floor. The troupe relocated to a smaller second stage at the nearby Walker Farm with hopes of bailing out the main theater in time for that summer’s musical — fatefully, the splashy “Singin’ in the Rain.”
But two years later, the playhouse sits empty as its nonprofit operators wrestle with questions about finances and the future.
“Our estimate right now is we’re three years out from getting back into the building, and when I tell people that, they’re shocked,” said Susanna Gellert, the theater company’s executive artistic director. “They think, ‘Why can’t we be back in tomorrow?’”
The answer, according to all involved, is almost as complicated as the bureaucratic paperwork they’re swimming in.
The theater company doesn’t own the playhouse, which was built as a church in 1839. Instead, the troupe leases it from the Weston Community Association, a volunteer-run nonprofit that also oversees the nearby 1795 Farrar-Mansur House museum and Cold Spring Brook Park.
In 2011, Tropical Storm Irene washed away a $700,000 renovation of the playhouse’s dressing rooms, prop shop and orchestra pit. Twelve years later, the 2023 floodwater rose about 30 inches higher, swelling cleanup costs to nearly $500,000 and the proposed reconstruction to as much as $5 million.
Both the community association and theater company are seeking damage reimbursements from insurance carriers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They’re also planning separate fundraising campaigns to pay for their parts of a shared restoration project.
But the state fire marshal has closed the playhouse to the public until the community association replaces the alarm and sprinkler system — a nearly $200,000 expense that volunteers have yet to figure out how to fund.
“A lot of the people we know who are capable of writing a big check are reluctant to do so until all of the building mitigation has been done,” community association President David Raymond said. “It’s a Catch-22 situation.”
The community association and theater company are not giving up. They recently welcomed U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vermont, to tell him about the cleanup challenges shared by dozens of communities statewide.
“When you look at this town at the helicopter level, we’ve got probably $12 million to $15 million worth of capital needs in the playhouse, fire station, post office, school,” Weston Town Moderator Wayne Granquist said. “That’s incredibly far beyond our capacity to raise money. We need to have external help.”
Welch didn’t promise federal funds, just words of understanding.
“The Weston Playhouse is such a community resource,” the senator said.
Planners are aiming to move all of the playhouse’s electrical and mechanical systems and backstage and storage space above the most recent flood line.
“It’s going to be a push to get the building sustainable, and then a push to get it functional again,” said Rebecca Marzalek-Kelly, the theater company’s general manager.
In the meantime, the theater company is presenting its 89th summer season at its nearby Walker Farm performance space.
“We’re doing what work we can right now so that we’re ready to get back into the playhouse once it’s ready,” Gellert said. “But all of that starts with funding.”
Raymond, for his part, knows the playhouse may be within walking distance of everything in town, but he and his community association colleagues have a long road ahead.
“Hope,” Raymond said when asked what kept him going. “And patience.”
