The Little Theater on the Farm, a small-ish entertainment venue transitioned from a Washington County barn, celebrates its modest successes but is more than ready to take on the deep end of the stage business.

Linda Hermans acquired the property in 2002. She began to convert the dilapidated 19th century Fort Edward farm into a theater in 2004.

"I always wanted a place for my church group to gather for a retreat," she said.

Although the ingredients were on the table, Hermans had to wait for the formula to come to her in a dream.

"I woke up like a shot, and I just knew what to do with the place," she said.

Hermans and her handyman partner, former Washington County code enforcement officer Thomas DuFore, have sacrificed a lion's share of sweat on the place through the years.

"The work never really ends," said DuFore. "There's always something to do."

"When I bought the place, you could almost say that the barns were unstable. That's how much work we've done," Hermans said.

One of the theater's more recent renovations included the conversion of the old farm's manure depot into brand new his and hers restrooms.

"I guess the space still serves pretty much the same purpose," she joked.

The stage sits in the old barn with spacious ceilings and hand-cut beams. The 71-1/2 seats were salvaged from an old school on Blackhouse Road.

"What happened was, when we were given the seats, they came in rows of sometimes 10 in a row," Hermans said. "I couldn't fit them in the truck that way, so I took a Sawzall and cut them in half. When the guys who were installing the seats told me that they couldn't fit another seat in the row, I jokingly told them to put the half seat there."

The punchline stuck.

"My granddaughter thinks it's the best seat in the world," she said.

Behind the traditional seating, the barn's back door opens up to reveal the bucolic rolling hills of Washington County. Hermans and DuFore plan to transform the area into outdoor seating and a patio area.

Behind the stage, past the black curtain and meticulously hung stage lighting, is the green room. It is decorated like an old hunting lodge, complete with a full bar and stuffed woodland creatures on the walls.

Thus far the room has only one stage mirror, but Hermans hopes to add more in the future.

In the winter, Little Theater's green room houses members of the State Department of Environmental Conservation. They use the space to track short-eared owls.

"They bring them right into our kitchen and tag them and weigh them," Hermans said.

The Little Theater on the Farm celebrated its grand opening in April 2007. Since then, it has played host to auctions, flea markets and haunted barn tours. The latter, according to DuFore, might be more fact than fiction.

But the venue may have found its true calling as the home theater of The Hudson River Shakespeare Company. Last year the troupe staged productions of "Love's Labors Lost" and "King John."

"I went up to Sandy Hill Days a few years ago and stopped by the tent for the Shakespeare company and asked Andy (Daly, artistic director of HRSC) if I built a little theater, would anyone be interested," Hermans said. "Well he went crazy! He said they'd always wanted their own theater and that was that."

The HRSC will begin its second season with the theater in July and perform through August.

Hermans and DuFore have had plenty of setbacks in their years together on the farm. Between them, they share two bouts with cancer, a hip replacement, a knee replacement and several deaths in the family, including Hermans' son, Michael.

"It was last November in Dutchess County and he had stopped to help somebody at an accident scene and was struck and killed," she said. "But he loved this place. He thought it was the greatest."

Hermans recalled her son carrying his daughter on his shoulders during a performance at the theater while the family was in Fort Edward on a visit.

"He told me he was so pleased he could take his daughter to her first concert," she said. Through it all, the theater is what keeps them going.

"It's our sane stability," Hermans said. "We just put one foot in front of the other an try to keep going."

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