Barter Theatre turns Ninety-Two
What do Snow White, Johnny Cash, and the Wizard of Oz have in common?
They were all title characters in the Barter Theatre’s 2024 season of music and drama. Unlike most 92-year-olds, the famed Barter Theatre grows more active and vibrant with each passing year. Founded in 1933 in the town of Abingdon, this “state theatre of Virginia” continues to delight audiences of all ages.
I call it off-off-off-off Broadway and look forward eagerly to seeing what each new season has in store. Last year, my husband and I traveled to Abingdon for a total of seven shows. There was an emotionally intense The Shawshank Redemption, as well as Shakespeare’s As You Like It, contemporary classics Charlotte’s Web and Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, fairy tales Snow White and The Wizard of Oz, and the fabulous production of Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash.
Despite the wide-ranging subject matter and staging, every one of the shows moved me to … at least a lump in the throat. That’s what Barter does: awaken the senses and touch the emotions.
Barter Theatre has always stood for excellence, having nurtured such American dramatic luminaries as Gregory Peck, Ned Beatty, Patricia Neal, and Frances Fisher. It’s an Equity house, a true professional repertory theatre—with cast members of the Resident Company belonging to the Actors’ Equity Association. The starter corps, called The Barter Players, appear mainly in children’s programming.
And the ticket prices? Take a zero off Broadway pricing.
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Barter Theatre turns Ninety-Two
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Barter Theatre turns Ninety-Two
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Barter Theatre turns Ninety-Two
The story of
Once upon a time, admission to Barter Theatre really was a matter of bartering. When Barter first opened its doors, the nation was gripped in the worst years of the Great Depression. Actor Robert Porterfield, a country boy from Saltville, Virginia, was finding it impossible to make a living in New York City, so he and some colleagues headed to southwest Virginia, where local farmers and homemakers produced an abundance of nourishing food and hungered for cultural enrichment. “Everyone deserves theater,” Porterfield would say.
Many families in the area had no cash to spend, but they did have hams (and live hogs), eggs, cabbages, jelly and more. The idea, according to Barter legend, was to “barter ham for Hamlet.” The admission price was set at 35 cents per person, or the equivalent in produce. “With vegetables you cannot sell, you can buy a good laugh,” was the idea. It worked, and Barter Theatre has been evolving ever since, even using a nearby drive-in theater for outdoor productions while the COVID-19 pandemic closed indoor performances.
Today the 511-seat Gilliam Stage has been updated to keep its appeal for audiences, while across Main Street the newer, 167-seat Smith Stage offers a more intimate theatrical experience.
Barter’s reach in Abingdon goes far beyond those two stages. The sprawling costume shop occupies a former corporate office building—with wig-making (and mustache- and goatee-making) facilities on site; endless rows of costumes range from togas to tutus, with staff on hand to create hundreds of customized looks each season.
Housed in the same facility as the costume shop, a spacious rehearsal stage is a key part of how Barter can present two or three productions over the course of a single weekend to keep theatergoers enthralled. Productions typically rehearse on the actual theater stages three times before the curtain rises.
After some productions the actors take questions from the audience. One of the most common questions is how they keep all the lines and movements apart when two or three plays are in production at once. The answer, they say, is to think of each play as a separate room in a house; changing plays is like walking from one room to another and shutting the door.
Musicians work on the rehearsal stage, too, so their work gets integrated from the start. A musical may require about 120 hours of rehearsal, a straight show about 80. During the long Barter season—March to December—there may be 17 shows in all: a dozen with the resident company plus five by The Barter Players; extra actors and musicians are also recruited for large productions.
Equity regulations limit the hours each actor can work in a week—about 44—so costume fittings, rehearsals, and live performances are woven together in a complex web. It’s like a four-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Producing Artistic Director Katy Brown is the puzzle mistress. She likens the process to making soup. “It’s a handmade, hand-rehearsed craft. Not like the movies,” she explains during a tour of the facilities for donors. “As we go along, we may add some parsley, take out the sweet potatoes. It’s a lot of math and soup.”
Thanks to the modern miracle of Zoom, theatrical technicians from all over the country can participate in the rehearsals, adding their expertise to Barter’s shows. “We can succeed off the beaten path,” Brown said.
In another part of town, meanwhile, sets are designed and built in a hangar-like building. With the recent retirement of longtime prop shop mistress Helen Stratakes, Barter veteran Meg Pressley now has charge of a staff of three who must create the mind-boggling array of items that might appear on stage: flying monkeys, fake rocks, sofas and dressers, dancing girls who pop out of toilets, pretend food, floors that bleed and copy machines that spew paper, and so on.
A balcony of the prop shop is crammed with production leftovers, from spears to golf flags and rowing oars, to a stuffed owl, even a fake body or two. It’s like the attic of a demented packrat. Among other challenges, stage furniture gets “a lifetime of abuse after just a few shows,” Stratakes said.
An equally super-sized scenery workshop sits next door. That’s where the imaginative backdrops are built, painted and stored. Used scenery stacked against the walls give scope to Barter’s range of topics: a stadium-rally-size portrait of Eva Perón, Grand Ole Opry logos, and a sign pointing to the “Morgue and Cafeteria.”
Phew! Nearby, artists live in dormitory-style buildings on a quiet street. Barter Theatre really does occupy the whole town of Abingdon … not merely the two relatively small stages.
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Abingdon, a frontier town still thriving
A visit to Barter Theatre also means a visit to historic Abingdon, an important frontier outpost in colonial times and after the American Revolution; before that the site occupied the crossroads of two Indigenous trails. Once called Wolf Hills, then Black’s Fort, somehow Abingdon, current population just over 8,000, has managed to stay up to date without losing its sense of old-fashioned graciousness.
One of the anchors of the downtown scene is The Martha Washington Inn & Spa—or simply The Martha—only a few steps from the theater. The rambling brick manse was once a private home and later a women’s college. I love to walk through the public rooms and visit the beautiful library, even if I don’t stay overnight.
I also love strolling the length of Main Street to dine or have a refreshing iced drink at Wolf Hills Coffee before or after a show. Good restaurants abound, and I particularly enjoy Greeko’s, Summers Roof & Cellar, and the patio in back of The Tavern. There’s nary an empty storefront in Abingdon these days.
Beyond downtown, important stops include the Southwest Virginia Cultural Center and Marketplace, which displays some of the region’s finest craft art for sale, and the lovely Abingdon Muster Grounds, a unit of the National Park Service. A costumed interpreter there adds immeasurably to any visit. Yes, in typical Yankee fashion, patriot forces from the surrounding countryside heeded a call for troops to defeat loyalist forces at the Battle of King’s Mountain in 1780. Their dash 330 miles across the mountains in a bit over two weeks helped turn the tide of the Revolutionary War.
But that’s another story.
The 2025 Season
Highlights of the 2025 Spring, Summer, Fall, and Holiday schedules include Hamlet, Disney’s Frozen, Deathtrap, Anne of Green Gables, and Elf The Musical, with performances in the full-size Gilliam Stage or the intimate Smith Theatre. Shows begin March 16 and continue through the rest of the year. Three-, six-, and 12-play subscriptions can save as much as half off single-ticket prices; tickets start at $22.
On “Barter Day,” June 7 this year, patrons may pay at the 2 p.m. performance of Frozen with non-perishable food items instead of purchased tickets.
For scheduling and ticket information, visit bartertheatre.com