Ten years ago, the Shea Theater Arts Center got a new lease on life.
Starting Jan. 1, 2016, the nonprofit board of the Shea Theater Arts Center Inc. took the reins of the then nearly 88-year-old theater at 71 Avenue A, which was the subject of town discourse for a year and a half as a new vision for the theater was debated.
Over the last decade, the theater has brought in local, national and international musicians, immersive theater and Shakespeare plays and town discussions, with plans for the next 10 years to keep the Shea community driven and accessible.
The ‘dream team’
In August 2014, the town of Montague released a request for proposals for new management of the only municipally-owned theater in Franklin County after the lease, held by the nonprofit Shea Community Theater Inc., expired.
The town of Montague owns the historic theater and leases the building for $1 a year for 10 years to a nonprofit board, responsible for management. During the summer of 2015, the Montague Selectboard voted to extend the lease for the former nonprofit through the end of the year as the process of finding a new board was underway through a request for proposals. Community visioning sessions were held to help determine what the arts venue could become to the growing downtown Turners Falls.
At that time, Christopher “Monte” Belmonte, who is now the Shea Theater Arts Inc. board president, was the only proposal for the theater’s lease. He was already familiar with the venue as his children were involved in the Young Shakespeare Players. The radio host and Turners Falls resident spoke with Penny Burke, former director of the nonprofit Northampton Center for the Arts, who knew of Belmonte’s connection to the Shea Theater. He says she planted a seed to help him envision what could blossom at the Shea.
“[Burke] said, ‘Hey, you should start a nonprofit board with me, and get Jim Olson from Signature Sounds to be a part of it, and find out some other cool people that can be a part of it, to try to bring the arts in a nonprofit way in Franklin County,” Belmonte explained. “And so that’s where it all kind of began for me.”
The Center for the Arts agreed to assist as a fiscal sponsor for the first year. A report from the Greenfield Recorder in April 2015 explained that Signature Sounds Recording Co. committed to helping produce events.
The proposal highlighted that this was “an incredible and rare opportunity” to utilize the town-owned theater as a way to embrace the roots of being a local theater serving Montague artists and audiences. It was a chance to make the Shea Theater “a bigger part of what’s going on,” according to a Greenfield Recorder article from August 2015. The proposal also emphasized the desire to have representation from underrepresented communities on the stage at the Shea.
“It’s gratifying to be able to be a part of community-building and bringing the arts to a county that gets overlooked for so many resources in so many ways,” Belmonte reflected, “and to add a sense of vibrancy to our cool little village of Turners Falls.”
Lisa Davol — former director of RiverCulture, the Montague arts planning organization seeking to foster Montague’s creative economy, and former Shea Theater Arts Inc. board member — said she came into the new era of leadership with knowledge of how to execute grant applications, the history of the Shea , connections to Montague town government and the larger arts scene of the Valley. She said the board required strategizing for development, but she was working alongside a “dream team.”
“I wanted to see [the Shea Theater] succeed, because it was this jewel in Franklin County,” she said. “I felt really privileged to work with and learn from such great initial board members.”
Linda Tardiff, managing director of the Shea since 2017, said she felt that this board was capable of not only maintaining the community theater, but also having the connections to bring on larger talent.
“This team of people that came together to say, ‘We need to have a wide range of programming, and we want to have some local, some regional and some national,” she said, “And this was the crew to do it.”
At the start of the 2016 lease, the nonprofit board consisted of Belmonte, Burke, Josh Goldman, Lisa Davol, David Sharken, David Singer and Jim Olsen.
As the Shea began this new chapter, a fundraising campaign called “Light up the Shea” was launched to help pay for ongoing renovations of the building. A grand reopening celebration, the weekend of March 4, 2016, marked the start of the campaign, with ticket sales from the weekend of performances going to the renovations.
Before the grand reopening, the theater had already undergone some renovations, including painting the interior of the theater, the installation of carpeting and the addition of a bar to the front entrance of the theater. After the success of the fundraising campaign, the Shea was later equipped with brand new lighting and a sound system.
“It really turned that into its own performance space and gathering space in the front,” Davol recalls of the renovations.
Belmonte said there were a number of moments over the last 10 years that stand out to him as highlighting the spirit of the nonprofit theater. However, one 2018 benefit concert he recalls feels like it encapsulated the mission of the venue: the multi-genre band Lake Street Dive. This concert, which board member Emily Lichter helped coordinate, generated enough funding to enable the Shea to be able to build an artist greenroom.
“So because Lake Street Dive did that benefit show for us, we were able to put in a gorgeous bathroom in the green room that’s nicer than either of my bathrooms at home, with a lot of sweat equity from another one of our board members, Chris McInerney, who was in there overseeing that project,” Belmonte said. “And so that, to me, stands out as the way all the pieces of the puzzle fit together.”
The “pieces of the puzzle” Belmonte mentioned are larger than that one benefit concert for the Shea Theater.
As a nonprofit theater, Belmonte explained that grants are a part of the funding structure that allows the theater to maintain its diverse programming and cost structures. He said they’ve benefitted from local and state grants, like from the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
As the town owns the theater, it is obligated to help pay for some maintenance costs. In 2019, the town appropriated nearly $100,000 for a roof replacement of the theater as well as new Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system installed in 2017.
This combination of public funding and community support gives the Shea the financial freedom to keep events affordable and embrace the “weird”— from experimental art to niche performances. Belmonte points to turning the theater into an immersive theater art piece with the “A Happening” series, or showing a Japanese kaiju movie with live music and sound effects as some of the more eclectic offerings. The Shea Theater also hosts locally-driven traditional programming, like the annual “Welcome Yule” performances that the theater has hosted since the early 2000’s, and the “Dragmas” Christmas shows hosted by Joe Dulude II as Mr. Drag.
“It affords us the ability to be weirdos, and maybe that’s the best thing the nonprofit status does,” Belmonte said.
Tardiff shared that from her perspective, the Shea is unique for offering the space to local creatives to host their own performances or programs, while also booking national and international talents. Some large acts to grace the stage include Judy Collins, Patty Smith, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and more. Tardiff also said the Warwick-based talent agency the theater works with, Simon Says Booking, has helped increase the number of artists coming to the Shea.
The rare partnership between the town of Montague and the Shea is another element behind the growth of the theater, Tardiff points out, as the town owns the building. She says the town has relied on her, the Shea Theater Arts Inc. board and volunteers to be the “entrusted stewards” of the building. Community buy-in for the Shea is another valuable pillar of support, along with business sponsorships, Tardiff noted.
“I think it’s a pretty rare kind of partnership, and I think we all take that responsibility very seriously, because it’s just so special,” she said.
‘Here’s to the next 10’
Backed by a history of eclectic programming and the feathers in its cap of grants and municipal support, the Shea enters its next decade poised for expansion while remaining a steadfast community anchor.
Belmonte pointed to a few future goals for the theater, including further Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) improvements, especially for access to the stage and the artist greenroom. He said that there is hope that future plans include adding ramps to make the greenroom and stage accessible to all performers. Additionally, they are considering a lift for the north side of the building, which would assist both wheelchair users and crew members moving heavy gear. He noted that while the house is already wheelchair accessible, he aims to “take it up a notch.”
“With that being such an old building, those concerns of accessibility were not built into the building,” Belmonte said. “But we want to build them into the building right now, and I think we have an opportunity to do that with grants, with support from the town.”
One unexpected funding opportunity has appeared for the Shea in the form of a $165,000 federal earmark for fiscal year 2026, secured through Congressionally Directed Funding from the office of U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern.
With this earmark, Belmonte says this funding can go toward opportunities for ADA upgrades, or even for plans to have a new marquee installed in front of the theater — a goal of the board since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We were as shocked as anyone else in the era of sweeping government cutbacks and DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) that we might get it, so we’re thrilled, assuming that everything goes as planned,” he said of the grant.
Even as the venue evolves physically over the next ten years, its mission remains unchanged: balancing local, community-driven initiatives with larger-scale touring acts.
“Looking back over the last number of years and having global greats like Punch Drunk, British immersive Titans coming and doing workshops and members of the Royal Shakespeare Company and The Globe coming, that’s pretty awesome for a small nonprofit and Turners Falls,” Tardiff said. “So here’s to the next 10. I hope that we can continue to build upon some cool things that we’ve laid the groundwork for.”