Telling Stories, Together

Amherst’s theatre community is thriving — and it has outgrown the borrowed classrooms, libraries, school auditoriums, and barn storage that hold it together today. Four established companies, hundreds of volunteers, and thousands of audience members a year are asking for the same thing: one home, built for the work they do and the many communities we serve.

 

Who We Are

The Performing Arts and Education Cooperative (PAEC) is a 501(c)(3) partnership of four of the Pioneer Valley’s most active performing arts organizations: Amherst Community Theater, The Rainbow Players / Empowerment Through the Arts, Starlight’s Youth Theatre, and Valley Light Opera.

Together, our member companies stage roughly 45 productions a year and bring more than 800 community members on stage and behind the scenes each season — actors, dancers, singers, musicians, costumers, and the set, lighting, and sound designers who make it all possible. We also carry theater education and outreach directly into the community across Hampshire and Franklin counties.

In a moment when it is easy to feel divided, live performance still does something rare: it gets neighbors into the same room, working toward the same curtain call. That is worth protecting, and it is worth growing.

Meet the Member Companies

Amherst Community Theater (ACT)

Founded in 1993, Amherst Community Theater produces family musical theater — from beloved classics like Peter Pan and The Music Man to lesser-known gems like Anne of Green Gables. It is entirely volunteer-run and receives no town funding. Each spring it partners with Missoula Children’s Theatre to give K-12 students a one-week, start-to-finish production experience, and its Theater Access Program provides 150–200 free tickets each year to low-income families and community agencies. It serves families across the Amherst area who want to perform, build, and watch theater together, regardless of experience or income.

The Rainbow Players / Empowerment Through the Arts (ETTA)

For more than 25 years, Empowerment Through the Arts has used improvisational theater to give people with a lived experience of disability a stage, a voice, and a creative community. Its flagship company, the Rainbow Players, has performed across the Pioneer Valley and internationally — from Ireland to the London Olympics — bringing a social-justice lens to issues like bullying, discrimination, and institutional history. ETTA serves individuals across Hampshire, Hampden, and Franklin counties who are too often left out of mainstream arts spaces.

Starlight’s Youth Theatre

Starlight’s Youth Theatre is dedicated to youth theater education, serving more than 130 young actors from over 32 communities across western Massachusetts each year. Under longtime artistic director Cynthia Strycharz, Starlight focuses on process over product — building self-esteem, communication, and confidence through classes, workshops, and full productions in which students take on everything from choreography to set design and light operation. Financial aid keeps tuition accessible, so cost is never the reason a child doesn’t get to perform.

Valley Light Opera (VLO)

Founded in 1975 by a group of Gilbert & Sullivan devotees meeting in an Amherst living room, Valley Light Opera is a volunteer-run company that has staged a fully produced light opera every fall for fifty years, alongside more informal spring productions. Best known for the works of Gilbert & Sullivan, VLO welcomes trained and amateur singers, musicians, and stage crew alike, and has long invested its own income back into the venues that house it. It serves multi-generational audiences and performers across the Valley who love live musical theater in the classic tradition.

The Challenge

Right now, PAEC’s member companies rehearse in borrowed spaces, build sets in garages and parking lots, and store costumes and props wherever there is room.

Although we are grateful for the partnerships that allow us access to space, working in temporary locations creates ongoing challenges. Some groups have rehearsal space but nowhere to build. Others have access to a stage but no place to train the next generation of stage crew. None have all of it under one roof — and each company is solving the same problem separately, at real cost in time, money, and missed collaboration.

That patchwork works, barely. It limits how much we can produce, who we can reach, and how well we can train the performers, designers, and technicians who will carry this community forward.

The Vision

PAEC is seeking a shared home in the Greater Amherst area: a single facility built for theater production. A place where:

  • A teenager building her first set can learn from a lighting designer working on his fortieth show.
  • Four companies with four different seasons can cooperatively share space, staff, and knowledge.
  • Kids from local schools can walk in for a workshop and leave wanting to come back for a show.
  • Performers of every ability, age, and background have a stage that was built with them in mind.

One roof. Four companies. A whole community of makers.

What the Space Needs to Provide

  • Rehearsal spaces for both large-group and small-group work
  • Classroom and workshop space for ongoing classes and youth education.
  • A black box theater for performances, readings, and flexible staging.
  • Separate rooms for costume construction and costume storage.
  • Set-building space and storage for building materials.
  • A dedicated props storage room.
  • Space for community access.

Design Concept of What A Space Could Look Like in Amherst

Community Benefits

The impact of a dedicated PAEC facility would extend far beyond the organizations that use it. The arts are an important part of the Pioneer Valley’s cultural and economic vitality. Together, PAEC member organizations attract thousands of audience members each year, support local businesses, and contribute substantially to the regional economy.

A permanent facility would increase the visibility of local arts organizations, attract visitors from throughout the region, support nearby restaurants and retailers, and further establish the Pioneer Valley as a destination for arts and culture. It would also provide a valuable community asset that supports education, civic engagement, and lifelong learning.

Location Flexibility: More Than One Path Home

PAEC is actively evaluating several paths to a permanent home and is not committed to a single site or single model. We welcome introductions to any of the following:

  • Underused institutional buildings — former school buildings, church annexes, town-owned properties, or fraternal halls with large open rooms and existing parking.
  • Commercial or light-industrial space — warehouses, former retail, or mill buildings in Amherst and neighboring towns that could be built out for rehearsal, black-box, and shop use.
  • Shared civic or campus partnerships — arrangements with Amherst College, Hampshire College, UMass Amherst, or the Town of Amherst that pair PAEC’s programming with underused auditoriums, gyms, or community rooms.
  • A build-to-suit or groundlease arrangement, in partnership with a developer or landowner willing to plan a long-term community-arts tenant into a new or renovated project.
  • A phased approach — securing rehearsal and shop space first, with performance space added in a later phase, if a single all-in-one facility isn’t immediately available.

If you own, manage, or know of a property in the greater Amherst area that might fit any part of this list, we welcome the conversation — even if it doesn’t check every box above. Contact us at: paec.arts@gmail.com

Feasibility Study

PAEC has received funding from a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant to conduct a feasibility study. This work is currently underway, and the PAEC board is requesting community input on a brief, 7-10-minute Survey and our consultant from the Arts Extension Service at UMass Amherst is conducting one-on-one interviews to determine:

  • Amherst community interest.
  • Scale of a capital campaign.
  • Community needs.