AMHERST — Four Amherst-area performing arts companies that together present 45 productions a year and put more than 800 community members in the spotlight and behind the scenes each season are joining forces to search for a single, permanent home.
Amherst Community Theater, Valley Light Opera, Starlight’s Youth Theatre and The Rainbow Players/Empowerment Through the Arts make up the Performing Arts and Education Cooperative (PAEC), which was formed as a nonprofit in 2022 to begin the hunt for new space. Currently, each company operates out of separate spaces scattered throughout the region.
“We rely on rented spaces that come and go, and it’s just not ideal,” said David Mullins, president of PAEC and chair of the board at Amherst Community Theater. “It would be really nice to be able to have one place where we can have rehearsals, costumes and set-building so that it creates a stronger community when it’s all happening in the same place.”
Since forming four years ago, PAEC has completed a feasibility study using an $18,500 grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Cultural Facilities Fund. Now its leaders are asking the public to complete a survey about their possible support for a new shared facility.
The facility would need to be large enough to include a black box theater, classroom and workshop spaces, rehearsal spaces, storage rooms for costumes, props and paints, as well as separate spaces for set-building and costume-making. Community groups would also be able to reserve space when it wasn’t otherwise in use.
The member companies would be able to borrow costumes from each other and use a shared set of shop tools. Currently, “To begin building a set, we have to move all the tools, all the lumber, all the materials into a place where we’re building before we can start building a thing,” Mullins said.
At the proposed new venue, though, “It’s gonna be already set up,” he said. “It will make such a world of difference.”
As it is now, PAEC’s member organizations use a number of venues: Amherst Community Theater holds its big annual production at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Bowker Auditorium; Valley Light Opera holds rehearsals at Wesley United Methodist Church and performs at the Academy of Music; The Rainbow Players rehearse at the Bangs Community Center; and Starlight’s Youth Theatre rehearses at Maple Ridge Church and Community Center. The latter two perform at various venues in the region, while the Rainbow Players have also performed out of state and internationally.
But even the groups’ existing venues don’t always fully meet their needs.
“Valley Light Opera has a huge costume collection, and they’re in a barn — an unheated barn with leaky walls. I was there last year, and there was a bird’s nest … in a costume, hanging on a rack,” Mullins said. They’re also on the second floor, which is “not easy to access and get them in and out of there.”
“It takes so much more time to get anything accomplished because of what we’re dealing with,” he said.
PAEC is exploring construction of a new facility at a cost of about $6 million, excluding the cost of land, or renovating an existing building. If they choose to renovate an existing space — for instance, Emily Dickinson Hall at Hampshire College, which PAEC has its eye on as a possible option — the cost would be lower, Mullins said.
The purpose of the survey is to gauge the community’s interest level and the likelihood of support before PAEC starts trying to raise money.
“So far, the initial feedback has been very strong and supportive. Some people say, ‘Oh, you’re never gonna be able to raise the kind of money you need.’ And other people say, ‘Yeah, the money is there, you just have to go out and get it,’” Mullins said.
The survey inquires about how often and where people have attended shows at local venues in the last 12 months, how often and in what capacity they or their family have been part of any productions by PAEC groups in that time, how much impact a new facility would have on Amherst’s arts scene and how much they’ve donated to PAEC or any of its member organizations. The survey also asks respondents whether they would support a new performing arts facility, and how much they’d be willing to donate to a capital campaign to raise money for it.
The survey is anonymous, but readers can enter their name to win one of three ticket packages for an upcoming local production.
Even if PAEC does get its new facility, that doesn’t mean that each of its member groups will move all of its productions there, Mullins said. Amherst Community Theater would continue to hold its big annual show at Bowker Auditorium, and Valley Light Opera would continue to perform at the Academy of Music. Those are both traditional proscenium theaters suited to large productions, whereas a black box theater is flexible and often suited to smaller shows.
“We’re not gonna replicate [Bowker Auditorium],” Mullins said. “We don’t need to.”
For more information about PAEC or to take the survey, visit paec-arts.org.
