I've seen plays produced at a dozen theaters within thirty miles of Middleburg, including five productions in the last three weeks, and the other night, as I was leaving the least likely of those locations, it occurred to me that venue shapes live theater absolutely. If you moved any of those productions from its home theater to another, you'd have to redesign it for the different venue--not just for the different stage--and that would change the play. Though the long-delayed emergence of that insight from the clutter of my mind suggests that I am slow to see the obvious, I offer here a brief description of three local venues that play a big role in the success of their companies.

The Winchester Little Theater produces its shows in a building that has clearly been converted from another purpose. The narrow brick structure dates from 1895, when the Cumberland Railroad built it to receive and distribute lumber, coal, and apples. The repurposed effect works two ways: it sets every production within a historical context that extends beyond theatrical concerns, and it reminds patrons that some people cared enough about a local theater company to turn a freight station into the company's home. The theater's thrust stage is not really a stage at all, just a floor with seats on three sides. Most of the space in the room is given to the performers, while the audience squeezes in. In other words, it's performer-centered theater.

Conversely, the building that houses The Wayside Theater was designed for audiences. It was constructed in 1946 to house the Middletown Movie Theater, and though it has recently been renovated, it still looks much like an old-time, small-town movie house. There's a box office, a balcony, a drinking fountain, and red carpet of the sort that predates multiplexes. Most of the space is given to long rows of plush seats, with two aisles that slope decidedly so that the proscenium stage is several feet higher than the floor at the front row. The theater's technical capacities are substantial, and there seems to be a lot of space backstage, where one imagines semi-magical transformations underway. It is a venue that distinctly separates performance from audience.

On a different hand altogether, Run Rabbit Run Theater has made its home in a building designed for farming equipment. It's an aluminum structure at Grandale Farm Restaurant near Hillsboro which has also been repurposed--as a dining room, not as a theater. The performers get a table in the dining room, or the space a table would occupy, and they perform in the midst of the audience, while the audience drinks wine and nibbles cheesecake after dinner. It's the inverse of performer-centered theater--no light or sound equipment, no backstage--just the actors and the script competing with exotic cuisine for our attention. It's like a theater gym where cognoscenti watch young talent working out, good young talent, the kind that makes the future of theater in this area look quite bright.