By Tom Ayres, Senior Staff Writer
Movie theaters in small towns and cities throughout the United States have been closing in significant numbers in recent years — a lingering impact of the COVID pandemic and, particularly, of the steadily burgeoning impact of streaming video, which allows movie fans, comfortably ensconced on a couch or cozy chair, a glass of wine in hand, to enjoy both recently released films and classics on large, wide-screen televisions from the comfort of home, popcorn at the ready.
In Woodstock Village, Pentangle Arts, which has been presenting first-run films at Woodstock Town Hall Theatre as frequently as 40 to 48 weekends a year for decades, has now cut back on its showings, especially since the first of this year. The phenomenon reflects both the economic realities of small-town theaters presenting first-run films and the declining audience for experiencing cinema in a communal setting.
Here in Vermont, the numbers are telling — there are now fewer than two dozen movie theaters left in the entire state. The iconic Roxy in Burlington, formerly the Nickolodeon, shuttered a year ago after a four-decades-plus run, leaving Vermont’s largest city without a movie theater. In smaller communities more analogous to Woodstock, beloved theaters such as the Savoy in Montpelier and the Playhouse in Randolph have had to reinvent themselves to stay afloat.
Pentangle’s Woodstock Town Hall Theatre film house is no exception.
“The real question for people to ask themselves is when did they last go to a movie theater and how many times in the last year did you actually go out to see a film?” queried Deborah Greene, the executive director of Pentangle Arts, during a phone conversation with the Standard last weekend, just as the arts organization was hosting a gala kickoff screening of “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale,” replete with a cocktail reception and a Victorian Era-through-Roaring Twenties costume contest.
“Nowadays, we do all of our film viewing on a big, 56-inch TV mounted on the wall in our living rooms. We’ve all gotten accustomed to seeing films at home,” Greene said. “It’s just easier, right? You keep getting bigger and bigger screens — you pour your glass of wine, and you stay at home to watch a movie. But you miss the whole communal experience of going to a theater, sitting next to friends or strangers, and experiencing the emotions, going on the same emotional journey with them. It’s essential for us to do something about this, because right now we’re sitting at home watching a movie by ourselves or just with our families — and that’s a critical part of the siloing that’s happening in society,” the Pentangle director and curator asserted.
Greene said the Pentangle Board of Directors is engaged in ongoing discussions about the future of cinema screenings at Town Hall Theatre, as well as about other live theater, music performances, and classes that might keep the historic venue in Woodstock Village animated on a weekly basis. She also spoke of the economic challenges of the current first-run film world that are leading Pentangle toward offering just a single first-run film on one or at most two weekends a month.
“The thing that is so challenging for us about first-runs is that if you want one on an opening weekend, you often have to agree to screen the film for up to an entire month. You have to do it for two weekends, maybe three — and we just don’t have the audience for that,” Greene lamented. “You’re immediately going to lose a lot of money — and it’s not a small amount. Thirty percent of what comes in goes to the film distributor — and that’s on top of the initial booking fee. You can plan ahead and have the film for one weekend sometime after its opening, but by then it may already be rentable for streaming.”
Greene cited Pentangle’s recent experience with the Disney/Pixar Studios animated science-fiction blockbuster “Elio” as an example of the contemporary challenges the film presenter faces. “‘Elio’ was supposed to be huge, and we had it for a couple of weekends, and the theater was just empty. You do the best you can, but you never know.” Another piece of the programming puzzle, Greene explained, is that some film distributors will not book highly anticipated first-run films into venues if the theater’s historic attendance numbers have been low. “They won’t give us the films because our numbers aren’t great — and we have to get the number of people who attend up in order to bring certain films in,” the Pentangle leader noted. “For example, I wanted to bring in ‘The Roses,’ the remake of ‘The War of the Roses’ with Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman — everything you hear about it sounds fabulous — and I just couldn’t make it happen because they wouldn’t give it to us.”
Planning ahead for the “Downton Abbey” screening — and thinking creatively about making it an immersive experience for theatergoers — was essential, typifying the approach that Greene and the Pentangle board members plan to take to cinema showings at Woodstock Town Hall moving forward. “We planned ahead for the current showing of ‘Downton Abbey’ for months,” Greene offered. The costume contest on opening night — which drew more than 100 people, many bedecked in period garb — made the inaugural screening of the finale of the ‘Downton Abbey’ film series a special event, drawing people out of their homes and into Town Hall Theatre for a collective experience.
It’s that kind of once-a-month, communal film viewing experience that Greene hopes to emulate moving forward. She’s begun thinking, for example, about a 1980s-themed rock-and-roll costume contest for the opening night of “Spinal Tap Two” later this fall.
Greene and the Pentangle leadership are also weighing opportunities to bring in films by regional creators — both features and documentaries — including advance screenings of works-in-progress. And they’re talking about forming a Pentangle Cinema Club for adults and a similar group for children in the near future — ideas that have borne fruit at other small-town theaters in the state, including at The Playhouse in Randolph.
“With the cinema club, you would have something where you’d have an experience with either the writers, the director, or producer, or the musicians in a movie or some other kind of interaction for people who are interested in that sort of thing,” Greene noted. “We’re also talking about putting together a kids’ movie club, where once a month on a Sunday, there’s this whole opportunity to dress up and perhaps do arts and crafts related tangentially with the film. It would be a full afternoon of activities and film for families.”
Greene says Pentangle is also considering presenting more streaming of real-time musical events, such as the classical music and opera performances that were shown from a concert hall in Prague and from the famed Teatro LaScala in Milan last spring. At the conclusion of last weekend’s discussion with the Standard, Greene tied the future of cinema at Town Hall Theatre to all of the other creative programming in theater and music that she hopes to bring to Woodstock in the times ahead.
“The Town Hall Theatre has to survive and thrive and be a center for the arts and community,” Greene averred. “It’s really important for that to happen. We want people in and out of the theater in the afternoons and evenings every day, for classes and things like that, so that utilizing the space is a wholly different experience for people.”