Skye Theatre: ‘A true community project’

CARTHAGE – Perched high on a mountaintop at the end of a dirt road somewhere between East Dixfield and Dixfield, a theatre project like no other is in the works.

While the weekly concerts that feature world class musicians who stay and play at Skye Theatre Performing Arts Center continue, a small army of volunteers are working to finish, bit by bit, this venue dream.

Outside the theater, instructor Steve Mitchell and two students, Sarah Chapman and Ethan Galloway of the Maine School of Masonry in Avon, work to prepare the foundation of what will be an entrance made of stone.

Inside, builder John Brown of East Wilton, continues his decorative railing work on the multi-level stage. A loose network of smooth, honey-colored maple branches curl up and around to form a graceful wood-in-motion backdrop for the stage.

Working at a table saw in the center of the theater’s house, Mike Boyd and Bob Withrow, both of Dixfield; Daryl Boness of Hartford and Tom Withrow of Wilton, cut planks that will be used to finish the front of the oak stage in wainscoting.

What all these craftsmen have in common is that they came to a concert here once and returned wanting to help Phill McIntyre build his theatre. 

“I came to concert here and it impressed me. I wanted to be involved; I wanted to help out,” Brown said.

“It’s magic,” Bob Withrow said of the theatre. “We don’t want to lose this opportunity.” The opportunity he speaks of is the chance to hear some of the greatest names in the world of Celtic music perform here, in an intimate setting in the middle of rural Maine and, at a very affordable ticket price, to boot.

The idea of a stay and play theatre came to McIntyre at the annual Celtic Colours, an international festival held on Cape Breton Island each fall. The festival features hundreds of Celtic performers from all over the world.

McIntyre, an auctioneer with an antique auto salvage business, suddenly came up with the concept of providing a stopover place for performers to stay and perform off the weekend in a smaller venue. Ideally situated smack dab in a north-south corridor between the Canadian-based performers and the big performing markets of Boston and New York, McIntyre realized that by proving a quiet, off-the-main-circuit refuge with a relatively small, but very appreciative audience to perform for, would likely result in bringing world class Celtic performers to the wilds of Maine.

To get started six years ago, he cleaned out his salvage garage to provide a small stage and rooms for the musicians on the second floor. But two years ago, the state’s Fire Marshal Office, following federal safety code standards that require an automated sprinkler system and handicap accessibility and other issues for a second floor theater to stay open for more the 50 patrons set in motion work to build a new theater space.

McIntyre decided instead of trying to meet expensive code standards, he’d build a new theater downstairs in an expanded space at about the same cost. Architect friends helped design the new theater and more volunteers, lots of skilled volunteers, have been working steadily as time and money allow.

“This is a true community project,” McIntyre said looking at the volunteers working. Still to be on the wish list to be completed will be to install a new wood floor, build a kitchen, lobby, small gift shop, add more bedrooms upstairs and side the building’s exterior.

“We went from a small listening room to a cutting edge performance space designed acoustically so that it’s like playing inside a instrument,” McIntyre said.   

Meanwhile the concerts, a total of 170 a year now, continue here and at other small venues within an easy drive. McIntyre has managed an arrangement with Unity College, The Franco American Heritage Center in Lewiston, Rangeley’s Lakeside Theatre and another in Berlin, N.H., that gives the musicians more stage time while staying at Skye Theatre.

Tickets prices are kept low at between $10 to $20 for shows that usually go for four times that much and no public funding has been used for this theatre project, McIntyre noted, “we’re holding our own,” financially.

Being in Skye Theatre either for a concert or volunteer help, he said, “you get such a sense of community.”