Stepping up to support our beloved arts venues

Two beloved Tri-state region arts/entertainment institutions have joined forces to try and make it through the COVID-19 quarantine. 

Sharon Playhouse will screen movies this month in partnership with The Moviehouse in Millerton.

The partnership is appropriately reminiscent of an old Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney film, where something needs to be saved and the gang says, “Hey, I’ve got a barn, let’s put on a show!”

In a similar spirit, the Playhouse and the Moviehouse have been unable to show films and plays for months because of the COVID-19 restrictions. 

Moviehouse owner Carol Sadlon (a resident of Lakeville) is a local hero for the extraordinary work she and her late husband, Robert, did in lifting Millerton up from a tawdry small town into a destination village. Longtime area residents will recall that The Moviehouse, which now screens everything from blockbusters to art films to the Bolshoi Ballet, was a XXX movie theater back when the Sadlons bought it. 

The Sharon Playhouse is also a cultural and economic cornerstone of Sharon and has benefitted from the dedication of Managing Director Robert Levinstein and Artistic Director Alan M-L Wager, who have shown extraordinary dedication to the community and the theater at a time when they could easily have walked away.

Levinstein  and Wager postponed the 2020 season of shows until next summer (when we all hope that the quarantine will at last be over). For this summer, they have worked with unflagging dedication and just a heck of a lot of heart to find ways to bring patrons to Sharon, with song-and-dance acts and film screenings in a makeshift outdoor, drive-in style theater. 

Sadlon too has used every ounce of her considerable creativity to find ways to bring entertainment to Tri-state residents who really need to be distracted from the stresses of what’s been an endlessly challenging year, with pandemics and power outages, shootings and riots and a particularly vicious election cycle.

The Moviehouse has booked “virtual” films throughout the summer, which is not an easy task. As if COVID-19 weren’t hard enough, there is complexity upon complexity in the process of bidding on and booking films in the modern world. 

Sadlon hasn’t given up, in spite of the tremendous struggles she’s faced in the past year, including the death of her husband  and partner in The Moviehouse.

The Sharon Playhouse team has stepped up to support her and to help keep The Moviehouse alive, in anticipation of the day when we can all once again sit together in a dark room and enjoy a show.

The listing of the September movies at the Playhouse in partnership with The Moviehouse is in this week’s Compass Arts and Entertainment section. Please do check out the list, choose some films, buy some tickets, make a donation if you’re able and above all let’s show the Sharon Playhouse and The Moviehouse some love. They’ve been there for us; let’s be there for them.