The Shadowland Theater now has a bigger house to play in.
The house is not an expansion of the 148-seat theater that opened in 1920 and is in its 25th year of producing live professional stage performances in Ellenville.
The house, in this case, is a two-family structure worth $50,000 that Provident Bank has donated to the theater to house out-of-town actors who perform in plays.
For the last decade, the bank has been allowing the theater to house visiting artists for free, but the structure has become so dilapidated that no one stayed there during the theater”™s record-breaking 2009 season.
The Shadowland company and supporters will renovate the structure and create a seven- bedroom, three-bathroom house.
“This was one of the biggest items on our wish list,” said Brendan Burke, artistic director at Shadowland. He said that costs of renovations are estimated at $50,000 that will be paid for through a fundraising campaign and possibly a loan.
The theater itself has been renovated in recent years, improving sight lines and modernizing production capabilities and dressing rooms and those improvements were paid for with the help of Provident Bank, among others. And “We expect to help finance the upcoming renovations to the house,” bank President George Strayton said.
The Shadowland Theater produces five plays annually and has included such well-known actors as Judd Hirsch.
