Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 9, 1992 TAG: 9202090087
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CLIFTON FORGE LENGTH: Long
OLD, ABANDONED THEATER HOLDS APPALACHIAN DREAMS
In every corner and closet of the old Stonewall Theater, Ray Allen sees visions of great things.He ignores the musty smell as he tromps down into the cavernous basement filled with asbestos-wrapped pipes and broken theater seats.
He sees a recording studio where unknown Appalachian musicians could cut albums and make names for themselves.
Back upstairs, Allen eases down a narrow hallway. The walls are painted flat black. Under his feet, there's a red-blue-yellow carpet that looks like some swirling 1960s psychedelic nightmare.
Allen, his stocky frame protected from the theater's dark cold by a thin sweater, peers into the old auxiliary auditorium. It's black except for the red glow of an exit sign.
He waves his flashlight and sees a full-size stage filled by skilled actors.
The vision is large - resurrecting one of Virginia's oldest movie houses and turning it into a cultural home for mind-expanding programs.
A drama school. A folk art gallery. A publishing house. A radio station. Experimental film-making. Drug counseling. A library for teaching school dropouts to read.
"Those are just dreams," Allen says, almost apologetically. "Now we've got to go out and get the money."
Five days before Christmas, the Stonewall's owners donated the 87-year-old theater to Appalfolks of America, a grass roots arts-and-education group led by Allen and based in the Alleghany Highlands. Thirty people have signed up for the Save The Stonewall Committee.
Restoring the grand old place will take lots of money, something Appalfolks has very little of right now. But Allen and the project's other backers believe their vision will draw help from people interested in preserving Appalachian culture and from people interested in boosting Clifton Forge's sleepy economy.
"What the Barter Theatre has done for Abingdon, the Stonewall Theater could do for Clifton Forge," Allen says.
Clifton Forge Mayor Johnny Wright says the Stonewall could be the cornerstone of the city's efforts to perk up downtown.
"I really think it can have an impact," Wright says. "We certainly will give them all the support we can."
The building is structurally sound, but to renovate it and make all the other dreams come true could cost as much $2 million, Allen says.
The Stonewall's backers are starting small, with free muscle power and, at least at first, modest fund-raisers.
"We know that cash is going to be extremely hard to come by," says Appalfolks board member Gatewood Leathers.
A hardware store has promised to furnish the copper pipes needed to get the old furnace going again. A plumber and an electrician have promised to donate their expertise. The city has promised the Fire Department's ladder trucks to help clean the pigeon nests out of the third-story eaves.
On a recent Saturday, 14 people showed up for a cleanup day. Volunteers ripped down the vines slithering up the sides of the buff-colored brick walls and scraped away some of the dirt inside.
Allen has spent a lot of time typing up grant applications while squeezed into a tiny theater office with warped wood paneling and a shorted-out space heater. He hopes the next few months will bring in a $2,000 foundation grant and a $10,000 donation from a big corporation.
He wants to pull in enough money to fix up the building for bluegrass concerts and other small money-makers.
"If ever there was a grass-roots organization, it's bound to be us," Allen says. "We sure are poor. We've got lots of fund-raising to do."
Allen, 50, an English and journalism teacher at Alleghany High School, is a former championship basketball coach. He gave up coaching a few years back and turned his energy to writing poetry and screenplays.
Since 1985, he's been the driving force behind Appalfolks. When he came up with the idea for the group at a writers conference that year, he saw it as a way to fight illiteracy and drug abuse through the arts.
The folks at Appalfolks have been busy since then: staging writing workshops in Kentucky and Virginia, publishing an arts newspaper, teaching poetry and video production to convicts, starting a youth affiliate at the high school, helping to create the Alleghany Highlands' literacy tutoring program.
Appalfolks' board includes Judy Ayyildiz, a Roanoke Valley poet and editor of the literary magazine Artemis, and Jim Wayne Miller, poet laureate of Kentucky.
With that kind of backing, Allen envisions creating a network of Appalfolks school and community clubs across southern Appalachia.
The Stonewall could be the headquarters, a place for youth conferences and drama festivals that push "drug-free creativity." The theater could have its own acting troupe, The Stonewall Players, who would give shows there in the summer and at public schools in the winter.
The creative energy could help fight the hillbilly stereotypes that Allen and other Appalfolks detest.
Allen grew up in the hills of eastern Kentucky He went on to study screenwriting at UCLA and then teach in California and Michigan. In his travels before he came to Clifton Forge in 1978, he learned that many supposedly enlightened people believe there's a coal pile and a junked car in every front yard in Appalachia.
Much of that image comes from Hollywood and the news media, he says. He mimics a newscaster's bass voice: "I'm Walter Cronkite, and I'm down here in the hollows of Kentucky. It's Christmas, and these people don't have anything to eat."
Appalachia has its share of poverty and problems, Allen says, but there's a lot of good that nobody hears about. "We want to show Appalachians in action in a positive way."
Allen knows that making the dreams a reality is going to be a tough haul. It could take 10 years or more, and the growing competition for grant money might force Appalfolks to narrow its aim.
"We might have to be more of a rifle instead of a shotgun," Allen says.
But for now, he'd rather think big. "If you don't dream about it - it doesn't happen."
For more information about The Stonewall committee or Appalfolks, call 703-862-7407, or write Appalfolks of America, P.O. Box 613, Clifton Forge 24422.