Beth Brown, granddaughter of the Peterborough Players founder, has been hired as the new director of advancement for the organization.
It’s a homecoming in several senses, Brown said. She was born and raised on the property and played hide-and-seek as a child in the barn that houses the Players theater.
Brown’s grandmother, Edith Bond Stearns, founded the theater in 1933. Eventually, her mother, Sally Stearns Brown, picked up the mantle and ran the theater throughout Brown’s childhood.
Brown was born into the theater – literally.
“My mother saw the curtain go up for ‘The Matchmaker,’ and by the third act, I was here, so the story goes,” Brown said.
But like her mother and grandmother, Brown wasn’t interested in performing herself. She appeared in one Players production as a child but later found her interest is in supporting the artistic endeavors of others. That will be her job as director of advancement, a role that was created for her.
The theater always put on professional-caliber shows, Brown said, but the stage and theater were far less polished in the days when she grew up on the property. The barn wasn’t heated or air-conditioned, and actors in the cemetery scene in “Our Town” had to stay still despite “mosquitos the size of blue jays” landing on them, Brown said. The theaters seats were folding chairs, and there was no sound equipment or the professional lighting of today.
And yet, Brown said, there was something special about the theater, which has allowed it to survive for 86 years, despite being tucked out of the way at the end of Hadley Road.
“It’s a professional company in the most unexpected place – in a historic barn at the end of a dead-end street, three and a half miles outside of town. There are a lot of theaters in much better locations that haven’t lasted nearly as long,” Brown said.
Brown, who has experience in fundraising and strategic marketing, was hired by the Players after spearheading a $5 million fundraising campaign for a new building for the Keene nonprofit MoCo Arts. She had been working for MoCo Arts for about six years, a job that drew her back to Peterborough after 35 years working in marketing.
“I kept telling myself if I ever got to the point in my career when I can do what I want, I’m going back to the Monadnock Region to work in the arts sector. And I got to that point,” Brown said.
After finishing the MoCo Arts campaign, Brown said, she was contacted by Players Managing Director Keith Stevens about coming on the staff at the Players. It was an offer she couldn’t refuse.
Director of advancement is a new position, and Brown said she’ll be looking at integrating the Players’ fundraising, marketing and box office development as well as helping form a strategic plan for the theater’s growth.
What that growth will look like has yet to be determined, Brown said, but she’s not looking to shift the theater’s mission but to enhance what is already working.
“It’s the same train, same track, just heightened execution,” she said.
The theater has already in recent years expanded its yearly season, including adding a shortened winter season and two shows from its second company. Brown said one option could be to continue to expand offerings, or grow the Players’ nationally recognized internship program. She’s also interested in forging new community partnerships and extending the Players beyond the Hadley Road complex to be more integrated into the community.
“All things are possible,” Brown said. “But it will still be the Peterborough Players, and we’ll still be producing high-quality, thought-provoking theater.”
After all, Brown said, the theater’s history is rooted in her own, and she finds comfort in the fact that there are traditions that linger from her grandmother’s time, even as the theater has been updated and grown.
The Players still begin each performance with a ritual snuffing of the candles at the entryway, and three knocks on the wall – a process that began in her grandmother’s day.
“I want this theater to continue to survive and thrive so that grandchildren of actors can continue to come back and be hired as actors, grandchildren can be hired as administrators, and grandchildren can come and be audience members, and go through those same rituals their grandparents did,” Brown said.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.