"Treading the (barn)boards"

Barn-turned-theater needs donations to finish taking shape.

By Bonnie Naumann

From "The Post-Star" Monday, June19, 2006

            FORT EDWARD- Over the past year, Linda Lee Hermans has started transforming her 19th-centuy barn into a theater using volunteer labor and donated construction supplies.

            Where hay and manure were piled several feel deep last May, a concrete floor and stage now sit.

            Beams that were strewn with cobwebs and grit are now adorned with light fixtures built from antique lanterns and cattle yokes.

            A new stairway leads upstairs to an attic that is home to barn swallows, a long rack of donated costumes and a collection of stage props picked up a garage sales.

            “I’ve been feeling my instinct all along, “ Hermans said.

            After she purchased the barn in 2003, Hermans had an early morning vision to convert the barn into a theater.

            Since then, she has relied on volunteers, donations and bargains to accomplish the jobs on her ever growing to-do list.

            When the Mary McClellan Hospital closed, Hermans went to the auction with a gut feeling that she would find curtains for the stage.

            She walked through the whole building saying, “I know my curtains are here”- and sure enough, on the top floor, she found a set of 16-foot drapes.

            She plans to re-hem the mauve material and hang it in the theater so she can open this summer.

            Hermans wants to offer the space for open mics or family-friendly concerts, if the artists do their own advertising.

            One day, she got a call from a friend in the construction business who had too much concrete, asking if she wanted some.

            She did, but she had a matter of minutes to decide where she wanted to put it, because it was already mixed.

            After The Post-Star wrote an article about Hermans in May she received a call from a woman in the Rochester area who was cleaning out a basement full of costumes and stage props.

            But donated materials and labor have their limits.

            Hermans has already spent more than $15,000 of her own money.  Thius weekend, she started fundraising.

            She and several volunteers dressed in costume and held out buckets to cars passings along Broadway in front of the Washington County government center.

            That money will go toward purchasing more building materials.

            Hermans plans to put in a 1,000 gallon holding tank, a crushed stone driveway and landscaping.

            “It’s amazing, once you bring it to life, how it takes off,” she said.