Roxbury Arts Group presence in the Stamford Community
A new stage is under construction, warm yet sophisticated colors are being applied to the walls and there is an eye-catching sign in the window announcing the advent of a new performance space in Stamford.
The Roxbury Arts Group will soon be offering community arts programming in the Main St. space that was once the home of Performance Plus.
Maggie
Cullen has been named Director of the yet to be named center and is busily
engaged in developing a full program of concerts, workshops and arts programming
that will be appealing to adults, families and children. “We
want to be here to provide the kinds of programming that the community wants,” she
says, and to that end, there will be two community focus groups, open to
the general public, on Thursday, April 24 in the space, at 76 Main St.
at noon and at 6:30 pm. The sessions will be facilitated by the Council of
Community Services of New York State. Refreshments will be served, and it
will be an opportunity for the the community to weigh in on what it would
like to see happening in the space. Call 607 325-7908 to reserve a place.
Cullen has a solid background in entertainment and in running performance spaces. For eleven years she was the manager of the Cabaret Room of the wildly successful Eighty Eights bar/cabaret in New York City. She has been the Associate Producer of the International Emmy’s TV show, served as the Production Manager of DanceSprot Champion Series at Madison Square Garden, and produced high-end staged readings at the Lucille Lortel Theater in NYC’s Greenwich Village.
Since coming to the Catskills in 2006, she has been fully occupied with her second love, animal welfare, as the Director of Animal Haven Acres Sanctuary and Rehabilitation Center. She is thrilled and excited, however, to be back in the arts. Her goal is to open the Stamford Center in June and to be keeping the doors open seven days a week as soon as it is feasible, with everything from comedy improv to jazz concerts to literary readings of new work to workshops for children and teens.
Susan Kenny, RAG’s Executive Director, says she and RAG’s board of directors are very excited to have this opportunity to be expanding arts program into the Stamford Community. The Western Catskills Alliance is purchasing the property with full support of the Robinson Broadhurst Foundation of Stamford and the A Lindsay and Olive B. O’Connor Foundation in Delaware County. Eventually, the barn on the property that houses a fully functioning 100 seat theater will also be available for programming. “This is a huge win-win opportunity”, says Kenny, “for RAG, for the Stamford Community and for the arts in Delaware County.”