The Schoolhouse: Meet Upstate’s Must-See Theater

By Alix Cohen

Founded by Lee Pope in 1983, The Schoolhouse Theater is Westchester’s longest running professional Equity venue, producing over 100 plays and supporting new works. Operating as a non-profit, the intimate 99 seat space is run by two of the most infectiously passionate, well versed professionals you’ll ever meet.

Producing Director Bram Lewis was raised on a farm in Lebanon, Ohio. His dad, a high powered lawyer, unwound with My Fair Lady (and a perilously increasing number of martinis.) “I knew all the parts at four.” Five years later, his mom moved him to New York City. “So one minute on a farm with cow friends, Daisy and Moonbeam, next going to school (Buckley) with the Rockefellers.”

At nine, apparently craving an audience, he volunteered to memorize and recite Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven in front of his class. It went well. He and his mother attended theater every Saturday. Taking classes at Circle in the Square as a teenager lead to becoming assistant to founder, artistic director, producer, Ted Mann.

Lewis successfully acted in soaps, commercials and regional theater until a bad experience with a director’s poor choices made him decide to turn his talents elsewhere.That his last performance was in a “brilliant play” reduced to “good” is a prime example of sustained high standards. He pivoted to directing and producing.

In 1987, he founded The Phoenix, a regional repertory company (named for the seminal Off-Broadway organization.) Observing an absence of local theater in Westchester, he moved the venture “away from the city, but not too far” where it blossomed to 10,000 subscribers. “I’ve grown to love those people. Everything we’ve done strives to please or challenge them.” The Phoenix lasted nine years.

Meanwhile, in Croton Falls, Lee Pope turned a 1925 elementary school building into a freshly minted visual arts center establishing The Schoolhouse Theater. Jack Palance’s daughter Brooke and actor/producer Michael Wilding (son of Elizabeth Taylor) founded Acorn Productions, bringing the curtain up.

Once again at liberty, Lewis serendipitously reconnected to old friend Pope, by way of a friend’s rear-ending in the Staples parking lot. About to close the venue, she did a 360 and asked whether he’d consider running Schoolhouse. He didn’t hesitate. Six weeks before Christmas Lewis managed to put together a season.

Artistic Director, Owen Thompson grew up in a theater family going back generations. Grandfather, Harlan Thompson, wrote a string of Broadway musicals in New York and paired Bob Hope with Big Crosby in Hollywood. Both Owen and his sister Jenn never thought of doing anything else.

Thompson spent his childhood backstage, excelled at school plays, and studied in London. His first professional job was as Louis in the touring company of The King and I with Yul Brynner. “Working with Yul Brynner -at the age of 12 and later 13- was like working with a member of an Alien species related to humans but superior to them.” He acted with the family in All My Sons (Arthur Miller) at River Rep at the Ivoryton Playhouse, of which he was Producing Director.

At 19, the thespian founded a theater company called The Facemakers. Family friend, Quentin Crisp played Lady Bracknell in a production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. It was one of Crisp’s few stage appearances.The Protean Theater was Thompson’s next creation. He acted in and directed the first show deciding then to stick to the latter. Of course, one never completely closes the door on acting. The company dissolved in 2003.

Thompson went back to school, completing two Masters degrees. He then started teaching at Fordham University and has since also taught at Marymount Manhattan College.

In 2020, as the world locked down, Schoolhouse closed. Never one to sit on his hands, Lewis instituted The Pandemic Players, over 50 thespians ZOOMING 130 plays in 130 weeks! Actress Elisabeth S. Rodgers approached Thompson about directing her in George Bernard Shaw’s play Great Catherine: Whom Glory Still Adores, about Catherine the Great. His answer was an unreserved “Yes!”

“I was like, let’s have fun with this. I want to play.” (OT) The director added costumes, background, music, and sound to a roster of what were otherwise readings.

Lewis took serious note. “It didn’t take long to understand we had a connection that was hard to quantify. Eventually Bram said he had a feeling we needed to be running the theater together.” (OT) On March 15, 2020, Leandra “Lee” Pope died. Her memory and influence lives on. The theater additionally suffered a huge financial hit. Still, these men are nothing if not scrappers.

Waiting for renovations to be completed and for the building to be cleaned by “a band of intrepid Purchase College kids” gave them extra time to plan the first show of 2023, Red by John Logan. Both artists are avid researchers. Thompson did a deep dive into Mark Rothko and his work.

The director flew to London, partially to see the paintings in question. With actor Patrick Lawlor, Schoolhouse’s Rothko, he also visited the nondenominational Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas.“It gave me an understanding of the artist I’d’ve never had otherwise.” (OT) Were it not for a circumstantial passing by of the curator, they’d been denied entrance. Like the accidental reunion with Lee Pope, Schoolhouse seems to have a guardian angel.

“[DIONYSOS] Gods of the theatre, smile on us [XANTHIAS] You who sit up there stern in judgment, smile on us/You who look down on actors [DIONYSOS] And who doesn’t?” Stephen Sondheim- The Frogs

Tech and rehearsal periods are necessarily very short. There’s a point in Red when Rothko and assistant Ken paint the white canvas a coat of red. It has to be done in 90 seconds. Thompson had exaggerated the size of frames, having them made eight by eight in order to dominate the room.

“What I didn’t reckon with was my Rothko was 5’8” and my Ken was 5’6”. They were far too short to reach the top. The two guys are jumping like crazy… (Across the room Lewis chuckles). I called the set designer and said it’s my fault. In forty-eight hours they remade the frames to 6’10.” Thompson told the actors they were 7’. ‘Finesse. Red won eight of the Broadway World Award categories for which it was nominated.

“The next year I directed Master Harold and The Boys (Athol Fugard) which I did as a 23 year-old… its lessons -not only about race relations, but about humanity and forgiveness- quite literally changed my life…When I reread it at midnight, I was sobbing. I thought, Why, during the post George Floyd era is no one doing this play?!” (OT) It was the first intensely political piece Schoolhouse produced.

Satchmo at the Waldorf (Terry Teachout) would be championed, then directed by Lewis who still occasionally steps in. Though the play is written for, and performed by a sole artist, it requires the actor to additionally represent Louis Armstrong’s manager, Joe Glaser, and trumpeter Miles Davis.

Casting was an issue. “I personally would rather never audition an actor again, but sometimes…” (OT) Again, fate took over. Overhearing their quandary, an actress friend suggested Pittsburgh-based Wali Jamal.

“All three portrayed characters communicate to the audience through the versatile vessel that is Mr. Jamal…There are no tricks of the acting trade at play here. He’s not impersonating any of the three, but very skillfully representing them…” Bruce Apar- Broadway World

When Schoolhouse was refused the rights to David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross in favor of the Broadway production, Thompson tore through his bookshelf thinking, “What’s gonna fill my heart and fit the season?” He came across Les Liaisons Dangereuses
(Pierre Choderios de Laclos), reading it again that night.

The next morning, primed to pitch, he met Lewis on the train. “Before I can say anything, he says, ok, I know you’re heartbroken, but I have an idea. It’s kind of crazy and way too big, but…” The show was Les Liaisons. These men were meant to work together.
“By the time we did it, Oh my God, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislane Maxwell made relevance go through the roof!” (OT)

Thompson reread the 1782 novel. There are many interpretations. Schoolhouse chose to produce the Christopher Hampton version. “It’s letters, you know,” he reminds me. “In the book, she gets smallpox and loses an eye. One Paris wag remarks, ‘Now her soul is in her face.’ She’s been exposed. I’m like, I’ve gotta ruin her.”

“Owen restaged the ending. Instead of ladies playing piquet, he put each in a pool of light. On every line of the Marquise de Merteuil’s last speech, servants tore away an item of clothing. Behind her, Valmont was still visible, dead. It was powerful.” (BL)
Nancy Nichols won Broadway World’s Best Costume Design for her opulent, period perfect – and clever- apparel.

“The fact the theater is still going is miraculous, but we’ve become an anchor in the community.

In 2023, we had only one reviewer. We’re now up to six, but not everyone comes to every show. It’s very difficult to get critics up here. Some editors won’t let critics travel…and the number of papers that have shut down…!” (BL)

This year, for the first time, a season is being fully underwritten – by US Alliance- a credit union formed by IBM, Marriott International, American Express, and Pepsi. If you listen hard, you can hear the theater exhale.

Schoolhouse’s immediate family consists of Bram Lewis, Owen Thompson, Jessica Klee, lighting designer Dennis Parichy, costume designer Nancy Nichols, production manager, Sofia (aka Skip) Lavion “a miracle-worker.” Chairwoman of the Board,
Emily Kingsley is indispensable.

McGyver-like associate Jessica Klee works with Thompson to design sound/music for all shows he directs. Captivating recordings used in last season’s Bertie and Wooster were of music by his grandfather who whose career included Harry Archer and Paul Whiteman. Lewis handles sound and music when he directs. Look for this aspect of his imagination in Outside Mullingar.

The upcoming season features: Outside Mullingar – “delicious, Private Lives – “gossamer’, ‘ and The Lion in Winter – “a wonderful free for all- nobody’s produced that one in thirty years. ” (BL)

At the top of Thompson’s Bucket List is Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge, which he’d hoped to direct this year. “And a musical!
I wanna direct Man of La Mancha so bad, but it’s way too big.” (OT) “We’ve talked about the bite-sized musical Fantastiks – in its original form…and Tom Fontana’s Ain’t That a Kick in the Head about The Rat Pack’s Legends Tour.” (BL)

In addition to three or four plays a season, Schoolhouse offers a series of one night, pop-ups. These have included, in part: actor/comedian Robert Klein, tenor saxophonist Houston Person, Peter Calo (guitar) and Anne Carpenter (vocalist), Jim Dale’s one man show…

“I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.” Thornton Wilder

We have been home to twenty-seven world premieres, an English language premiere, and have transferred seven productions Off-Broadway: Ingmar Bergman’s Nora, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, S.N. Behrman’s Biography, Elaine Del Valle’s Brownsville Bred (which was later adapted into an award-winning feature film), L.O.V.E.R by Lois Robbins, B.H. Barry’s Enlightenment of Mr. Mole, and Stevie Holland and Gary William Friedman’s Love, Linda.

The Schoolhouse Theater
The North Salem Community Center
3 Owens Road, Croton Falls, NY 10519
https://www.theschoolhousetheater.org/

SIMPLE TRAVEL DIRECTIONS:
Take Metro North on the Harlem Line from GCT or 125th Street to Croton Falls. Once there, there is about a seven minute walk (up a gentle hill) to the theater building at 3 Owens Road, Croton Falls, New York. Ubers are available or folks can call ahead to Croton Falls Taxi Service at 914-290-5400.

Also check out Owen Thompson’s The Bardcast: “It’s Shakespeare, You Dick!”- (recipient of the New York Shakespeare Award for Best Podcast), which he co-hosts with Lisa Ann Goldsmith on the verge of its 156th episode.