ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 19, 1996 TAG: 9604190078
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ABINGDON
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
Stage, television and movie actor David Birney called it as pretty as any theater he'd ever played in when he strolled through the renovated Barter Theatre recently.
Birney is one of many actors who began their careers at Barter. But it is no longer the same Barter Theatre as when Birney acted on its stage some two decades ago.
The 165-year-old building - the second-oldest place in the United States where professional theater is performed - has just undergone a $1.7 million face lift and expansion. Its first play in the revamped facilities, "The Tie That Binds" by Frank Lowe, opens tonight.
"I can't tell you what a treat, to come back in these facilities," said Richard Rose, Barter's artistic director and producer, who is directing Lowe's play.
Rose had directed on the former stage which went back about 28 feet. Now it goes back 60 feet, and has new space on one side allowing a variety of standing sets to slide in and out for more elaborate productions.
Birney is just one of the earlier Barter actors who got a preopening peek at the new facilities. Rose said every actor has had the same reaction.
"They were absolutely blown away," he said. "They just couldn't express all the feelings they were going through."
The balcony, which used to run down each side of the theater and leave audiences craning their necks to look down at an angle at the performances, now extends about halfway over the floor. The alteration expands the number of seats to more than 500, and there is not a bad seat in the house.
New lighting and sound systems also have been installed. Heating and air-conditioning have been modernized. Each maroon seat covering has the Barter logo, designed by illustrator Charles Vess, stitched in gold into its backing. For each seat, it took Lebanon Apparel 90 minutes to complete the 40,000 stitches that make up the logo.
The late Robert Porterfield, whose portrait now greets audiences as they enter the theater through its new double doors, launched Barter in 1933 during the Depression. The Southwest Virginia native was among the actors facing tough economic times in New York. He talked a group of them into coming to his home state where farmers had few buyers for their meats and vegetables.
Porterfield talked Abingdon officials into letting them perform in the former town hall. Barter's first play on June 10, 1933, was John Golden's "After Tomorrow." Admission was 35 cents or the equivalent in "vittles," and 80 percent of the audience paid the second way.
The building was constructed in 1831 as a new location for Sinking Springs Presbyterian Church. In 1837, it became the property of the Sons of Temperance and came to be known as the Temperance Hall or "opera house." Long before the days of Barter, on Jan. 14, 1876, it housed a production of "The Virginian" with the proceeds used for building repairs. In 1900, it was deeded to the town.
In 1953, Porterfield learned that New York's famous 50-year-old Empire Theatre was about to be demolished. He got permission to haul away everything he could in the 48 hours before the wrecking balls started to swing, and he recruited a cavalcade of actors and Abingdon residents to convoy some $75,000 worth of lighting fixtures, seats, carpet, curtains, furniture, paintings and a stage lighting system designed by Thomas Edison to the Barter building.
Eighteen seats from the Empire remain in the theater, moved to two new box-seat areas on either side of the extended balcony. Ornate bronze chandeliers and a candelabra from the Empire will still light the auditorium, but with redesigned sculptures representing the leaves and vegetables once used to barter admission and cherubs with the faces of key figures in Barter's history.
"Our concern was how do you deal with this historic structure and not take away the ambiance that was here?" said Harry McKinney who, with fellow Abingdon architect Peyton Boyd, designed the renovation and addition. "We realized that the design should be driven by these fixtures."
"I think it's amazing that the company has been able to do some of the things it's done, given the primitive nature of the facilities," Boyd said.
The dressing room used to be located beneath a stage trapdoor and, when people or things had to appear or disappear, actors or objects would sometimes be dropping down to where other actors were dressing or applying makeup.
Now there are separate dressing rooms with two to three times as much space for men and women, each complete with showers and restrooms, two private dressing rooms for guest stars, and an actors' lounge complete with television monitors to follow the play.
One of the features returning actors like best is direct access to the stage from the dressing rooms. Before, they had to go outside the building to reach it, which made things interesting when it was raining. Rose said they used lots of raincoats and umbrellas.
All the work has been done in the four months since Barter closed its production of "Amadeus" in December. "That's no small tribute to the people who have done the work," Rose said.
Nobody actually thought the theater would be able to reopen before 1997 or 1998, he said, even though the fund-raising campaign started in 1994. The town of Abingdon gave $500,000 and its bond rating allowed Barter to go ahead now rather than wait until all the necessary money was in hand.
As the fund-raising continues, plans are to renovate the Barter housing facilities and to build a third 360-seat theater in addition to Barter Stage II across Main Street from the original Barter building, perhaps within the next three to five years. So far, the theater has raised $2.4 million in contributions and pledges - half its goal.
When all these projects are complete, Rose said, the Barter will have 950 seats in three theaters running practically year around.
In the original building, one of the comments that most pleased Rose came from Mary Dudley Porterfield, widow of Barter's founder. "It's still Barter," she told him. "I can still feel Bob Porterfield's presence here."
LENGTH: Long : 110 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. PAUL DELLINGER/Staff Architects made sure that noneby CNBof the historic ambiance was destroyed in Barter's renovation.
color
2. The Barter logo has been stitched into each of the theater's
500-plus seats. color