Red and I went to Hubbard Hall, our town’s beautiful arts and education center today to meet with David Snider, the director of the center. We met for a couple of hours and talked about a lot of things, including the importance of the beautiful old vaudeville hall and the adjoining arts center to our small town, Cambridge.

David is thinking of staging a play or theater production to coincide with our October Open House, on Columbus Day Weekend. Maria and I think it’s a great idea, we think the visitors to the Open House, which coincides with foliage season, would love having a special event to go see on Saturday night.

We are getting focused on our two open houses, the first on June 25, and 26th. Maria is gathering artists for her art show, Fate and Red will be doing herding demos, the donkeys and the pony will be on hand for visitors, and we are planning on having the shearer and the farrier, and perhaps a cow milking demonstration as well from Ed Gulley.

Plus talks and poetry readings, food at the Round House Cafe, some music and some big horses from Blue Star Equiculture. We’ll do many of these things at both Open Houses, details to come on Maria’s Events Page.

David Snider came to Cambridge from the Arena Stage Company in Washington, he has taken up the cause of figuring out the future of this remarkable old building and arts center. He is pulling in lots of kids and students from the area, and plotting some innovative and exciting new theater productions.

Since the recession, financing for the arts has changed and David has all kinds of ideas for expanding the role of Hubbard Hall in the community for for bringing new productions to the town. The setting is a fabulous place for theater, I did one of my first book readings there.

I asked David to come upstairs with Red so I could take his photo. In the 1800’s, many small towns in upstate New York built vaudeville and opera houses, they were a seminal part of rural culture. Hubbard Hall has been preserved by the heroic efforts of some local families, and it’s time for it to get to the next level of security and creativity.

Places like Hubbard Hall are critical for rural areas, many of which are ignored by funding organizations in favor of big cities. Economists and bureaucrats have largely abandoned rural areas as being inefficient and too small to pay much attention to in the new global economy.

David and I talked about a lot of things, one being some crowd sourcing campaigns to help bring writing and music and arts classes to rural children, others to help the hall build up its finances for new productions and staff. It is a worthy cause, arts programs and creativity have saved and revived a lot of communities.

Hubbard Hall is, in many ways, the heartbeat of our town. We need it and love it, so much of the town’s cultural life revolves around it. David is a hard worker, he has taken on a big task. It was great to meet with him and visit with him and toss ideas back and forth. It’s a great idea to fuse a production with our October Open House, our town is committed to keeping community alive, and David believes a creative center can nourish the town, even save it from the struggles of many other upstate towns.

He is right. This is place that needs to work, rural communities everywhere are fighting to save their cultural identities, and Hubbard Hall is a great treasure.

This stage and this room has so much magic, it wants to thrive. It will.