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Two local actors are reviving a theater built by the late Rip Torn, giving the old barn a second life.
Alec Linden
The theater’s first and only audience gathered in 2004 for a performance of a play adapted from letters between Beat poet Jack Kerouac and one of his lovers.
Amy Wright, a celebrated actor and the theater’s current owner, said “here comes the second performance” after 22 years.
Wright, whose decorated career on stage and screen includes major roles in the Broadway plays “Noises Off” and “Fifth of July,” was married to Torn for 30 years before his death in 2019.
Best known for films including The Man Who Fell to Earth and the Men in Black series, Torn remained devoted to the stage throughout his career, appearing in numerous Off-Broadway productions and 10 Broadway plays. Wright said the barn reflected that lifelong passion for live theater.
The barn project, Wright said, was modeled after Torn’s affinity for Shakespeare. It was designed with London’s The Globe Theater in mind, complete with high catwalks, floor and mezzanine audience levels and even oversized barn doors at the back of the stage to allow horses to enter during Shakespearean productions.
Andrus Nichols, an award-winning actor who will be the director of the theater, said the venue will focus on classic and contemporary plays. “We want to do Chekhov. We want to do Strindberg,” she said, noting the programming will generally feature modern classics alongside newer, sometimes lesser known productions – but that the space lends itself to experimentation.
“You can program some weirder stuff” in a smaller theater, Nichols said, noting the “intimate, but also so tall” configuration of the auditorium. Even the horse doors may get some use, she said. “Anything is on the table.”
Celebrated actors Amy Wright and Andrus Nichols are reviving the late Rip Torn's theater in Lakeville. Alec Linden
The theater’s second life became a reality after a fortuitous coffee meetup between Nichols and Wright last year led to the two becoming partners in bringing Rip’s Barn back to its long awaited heyday.
“You had a chocolate chip cookie,” recalled Wright to Nichols, both standing in an upstairs landing outside what will become a studio and workspace for actors and playwrights. Nichols replied, laughing, “And you said, ‘You want my theater!’”
Nichols said Torn’s vision more than 20 years ago made the project feasible.
“We’re not retrofitting a barn to make it a theater,” she said. “It was built really intentionally as a theater.”
Nichols’ resume includes leading roles at the Bedlam Theater, including productions of Kate Hamill’s “Sense and Sensibility” and George Bernard Shaw’s “Saint Joan.” She also has an extensive career in teaching and directing educational theater programs, including at the Sharon Playhouse.
She described her role in reviving Rip’s Barn as her “third rodeo,” having co-founded the Coop and the Bedlam Theater, both in New York. Her motivation with Rip’s Barn, she said, is to give the local professional acting community a place to work and showcase their art close to home.
“In my experience, the most fruitful and magical processes come out of rooms where everyone is excited about the thing we’re making together,” she said, adding that the programming will be collaborative to foster that sense of excitement.
Nichols said the magic also happens when you put professional and non-professional actors in the same room. She reflected on a 2023 production of “Our Town” that she directed at the Sharon Playhouse, which included both professional and amateur actors, and remembered it as “incredibly rewarding.” She plans to create these opportunities regularly in the new theater, with a community production every season or two.
“It’s really about who is in the room,” Wright said. “This whole venture we’re on is going to evolve with who walks through the door.”
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The all-female cast of Swingtime Canteen prepares to wave goodbye after bringing WWII-era music and stories to the stage. The special July 4 performance is among Sharon's holiday festivities.
PHOTO BY JENNIFER ZMUDA, COURTESY OF SHARON PLAYHOUSE
“What’s so cool about Swingtime Canteen is the way it features women,” said Claire Marie Spencer, who plays Topeka Abotelli, the Rosie the Riveter-inspired character. “I think that the show does an incredible job of featuring the enormous shift in history that happened during WWII when, in a lot of ways, women came to the forefront in a beautiful team effort.”
The show’s fading Hollywood starlet and band leader Marian Ames, played by Margaret Dudasik, brings a group of instrument-playing women to London, providing her with a meaningful second act as a performer for American troops stationed abroad.
“It was a period of time when probably everyone you knew was serving,” Dudasik said. “A husband, a high school sweetheart, a neighbor. It really shows that you never know what someone’s going through or dealing with.”
Michelle Lemon, who returns to Sharon after years of performing and choreographing at the Playhouse, enjoys significant stage time as she jams on the saxophone, guitar, banjo and piano throughout the show. But for her, it’s a moment of collaboration with the audience – one of many – that causes her to choke up during every performance.
“We invite the audience to sing with us, and to see people sing the lyrics back…I kind of have to disassociate because it’s so beautiful.”
Spencer echoed the sentiment, saying it’s a song called “Pack Up Your Troubles” that brings her to tears each night.
“The idea of 18-year-old boys singing such a happy, upbeat song in the midst of such evil and darkness is powerful,” she said, alluding to a parallel between the song’s history and how it was performed by the women during the show amidst a dark moment.
Still, the show is chock-full of lighter moments and familiar tunes. Lauren Seery, who plays Lt. Jeannie Pielmeier and serves as an integral member of the band, enjoys the first moment when the cast breaks the fourth wall with style – and sweets.
“There’s a break in the middle of the song ‘Hollywood Canteen’ where the band gets to jam out over some really fun changes, and Lucy, Michelle and Margaret’s characters go into the audience and serve real donuts and coffee to the audience as if they were the troops,” Seery said.
The show features 30 different songs from the 1930s and 1940s in a fast-paced, upbeat production that brings audience interaction into the spotlight.
Originally hailing from six different states across the country, the cast currently resides in Manhattan or Brooklyn but has found a handful of local favorite spots during the show’s run.
The cast said they’ve gone as a group to Grassland Dessert Cafe in Lakeville for ice cream more than once. Lucy Rhoades – who shines this year as Katie Gammersflugel after her breakout Sharon Playhouse debut as Dyannne in Million Dollar Quartet last summer – said her first job in New York City was working at an Irving Farm so she stops in for coffee in Millerton often. Others have enjoyed antiquing in the area, stopping at On the Run for a breakfast sandwich, and hiking in Kent State Park and enjoying views of the 250-foot waterfall.
Tickets for Swingtime Canteen are still available at sharonplayhouse.org, including a special holiday afternoon performance at 4 p.m. on the Fourth of July.
The all-female cast of Swingtime Canteen shares a behind-the-scenes moment before taking the stage.Madi Long
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