Stage 33 Live documents performances and presentations on a simple stage in a former factory building for downstream web, radio, and TV audiences. Most sessions are also public listening events with admission by donation.
Only original material is allowed.
We do this to help passionately creative and knowledgeable local and regional community members find ears and eyes on multiple platforms. Established performers and presenters are also welcome; their participation helps bring attention to others still getting their foot in the door.
Our listening events turn the band-in-a-bar ethos upside-down: We’re all about honoring the stage — not sticking it in the corner and talking over it, or using it as an add-on to get people through the door to sell them drinks and food. (Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that; it’s just not what we do.)
We’re not a plush theater or a state-of-the-art facility… just good folks doing this fine thing — the homegrown love child of Tiny Desk Concerts, Ted Talks, Science Friday, Midnight Special, and The Little Rascals.
Stage 33 Live is driven by the best parts of post-industrial small-town rural New England come-together and can-do Yankee bootstrap ingenuity and hard work. We’re an independent, unaffiliated, unfunded, local nonprofit that relies on donations, underwriting, and sponsorships to exist and improve. Everyone involved is a volunteer: before, during, and after, offstage and onstage. We hope that will change, but for now our economy is part barter and mostly volunteer. In addition to the media production and distribution that we provide, participants are encouraged to use the documentation however they see fit to promote the thing that they do.
We present one-off concerts and presentations throughout the year, but our main activity is a monthly series with short performances and presentations in the first hour, followed by a set from a featured performer or presenter in the second hour. From time to time there may be an additional third set as well. Audiences may choose to attend some or all.
Nearly everything that Stage 33 Live has hosted has been the result of performers or presenters reaching out to us. This means that the people on the stage, like the people in the audience, are there because they want to be and chose to be. Each is motivated for the other, an ideal symbiosis.
We also attempt to accommodate closed-set requests. Touring musicians, for instance, may be contractually restricted from additional public performances if they’re playing a concert nearby.
We’re currently building the documentation library to create 54-minute radio and TV variety episodes; and in the meantime trickling out edited actuality to the web. The radio and television programming will be an evergreen mix of music and spoken word, available to all broadcasters. The programs will also be posted to the internet subsequent to broadcast release.
Locally produced quality programming is always desired by regional broadcasters. Additionally, making the material widely available on multiple platforms — including in perpetuity in the web — makes it doubly effective as an outreach vehicle for sponsors and underwriters. By providing programming that inspires support from individuals and is a desirable underwriting vehicle for businesses and foundations, we hope to eventually be able to provide at least one paid position in our community, and stipends for at least some of the performers and presenters.
While Bellows Falls is rich in culture and nature (we love this place), it has the lowest per capita and median household income of any incorporated village in Vermont, with a poverty rate of 22.6% — yet the community has rallied to support this project by helping build out the physical and technical infrastructure, providing professional advice, volunteering time and muscle, and more.
Equipment upgrades are an ongoing effort. A very sharp eye is kept on cost-benefit; we use the most affordable level of technology required to do a given task well. Admission to the listening events is by donation; freewill donations can also be made online via www.stage33live.com — for tax deduction reporting, Stage 33 Live Ltd’s nonprofit EIN is 82-2349941.
In addition to boosting local pride by shining a light on our performing and academic communities, Stage 33 Live contributes to the local and regional economy by showing a wide audience that the southern Vermont and New Hampshire borderlands is an embracing and engaging destination for art and intellect.
33 Bridge Street in Bellows Falls, Vermont, is the ADA compliant venue for Stage 33 Live. Seating capacity is limited to an intimate 40 (first come first served), plus standing room. 33 Bridge Street is a creative economy incubator owned and operated by The Island Corporation; Stage 33 is not a venue for hire through Stage 33 Live.
