Schoolhouse Theater Reopens Its Doors After 3 Years

The pandemic shuttered The Schoolhouse Theater in Croton Falls in 2020, as it did so many other theaters and arts groups.

“Covid intervened in everyone’s life,” said Schoolhouse Artistic Director Owen Thompson.

But the oldest professional theater in Westchester found a way to soldier on by pivoting to Zoom matinee performances. Schoolhouse Theater presented Pandemic Players, a series of more than 120 virtual play readings in as many weeks, a practice that continues to this day. Now, three years after its closure, the Playhouse is returning to its beloved building with a new live season of plays.

One of the virtual Pandemic Players readings, Red by John Logan, won a Tony Award for best play in 2010. The story explores what artist Mark Rothko’s internal struggles might have been as he worked on his mural project for The Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan’s Seagram Building in the late 1950s. At the time, it was the biggest commission in the history of modern art, but the project had an unexpected outcome.

Red was a huge hit in London, where it premiered, and then in New York. Its virtual presentation at Schoolhouse in 2021 made a lasting impression on Thompson, as well as Schoolhouse’s producing director Bram Lewis. And so, when the pair were formulating a season for this year’s grand reopening, Thompson told Lewis, “I think we need to do Red. The play is amazing and the actors were incredible,” he recalled.

And that’s how Red became the first play in Schoolhouse’s new live season. From April 14-30, the theater will present a fully staged version directed by Thompson and starring Patrick Lawlor as Rothko and David Beck as Ken, a character based on Rothko’s assistant. Lawlor and Beck are the same actors who appeared in the virtual production two years ago.

The Schoolhouse Theater & Arts Center was founded in 1983 by Leandra Pope, who drove by the abandoned 1925 schoolhouse one day, thought it would make a great theater, and bought it. The cafeteria/gym was fitted with a stage and seating for 99, while the classrooms were turned into galleries and studio spaces for exhibiting the work of Westchester artists. Over its 40-year history, Schoolhouse Theater has sent seven productions to Off-Broadway.

In 2020, when Pope passed away, the theater’s future was uncertain. It was ultimately purchased from Pope’s heirs by the town of North Salem, allowing the show to go on. Thompson said post-pandemic, Schoolhouse is one of the only remaining Actors’ Equity theater in Westchester.

Since the virtual production of Red, Thompson has become something of a Rothko devotee. “I’ve been eating and breathing Rothko for a while,” he said. While in London last year, he visited Tate Britain to see the Seagram murals while they were on display. He also traveled to the non-denominational Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, where 14 massive Rothko paintings, all in shades of black, are on permanent display.

“I had an ecstatic and almost religious experience in front of the Rothkos in the chapel,” he said. “They look black, but you have to let them work on you. They come to life.”

Later this year, Schoolhouse will also present an in-person production of (mis)Understanding Mammy: The Hattie McDaniel Story by Joan Ross Sorkin (October 13 – 29).

Michelle Falkenstein is an award-winning freelance journalist who has written for The New York Times, ARTnews Magazine, Hadassah Magazine, The Journal News, The Albany Times Union and other publications.

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