The dream of a Hadley improv comedy nonprofit organization has become a reality.
Happier Valley Comedy opened the curtains to its new theater with a grand-opening celebration this past weekend.
“I’m feeling full of gratitude,” said Pam Victor, Happier Valley’s founder, president and self-described “head of happiness,” whose birthday was the same day as the theater’s grand opening. “Honestly, it’s been a ton of work … two years of fundraising and then a thousand-million different decisions, small and large. We’re here, and I’m so excited to share it with our community.”
The theater is double the size of the group’s existing space at 1 Mill Valley Road with an expansion into a former dance studio next door. The new space includes 74 installed theater seats — an upgrade from its previous 60 folding chairs — an accessible ground-level stage, enhanced theatrical lighting and audio system, and a set wall with two doors and a small backstage area.
“It’s not a complicated set, but it is a set that is flexible and serves the need of whatever show that we find ourselves in, and I think our new space does that in a really beautiful way,” said Maddy Benjamin, Happier Valley’s “facilitator of fun” and program manager. “We have a lot of room to play with and a lot of space to toy with our imaginations up there.”
The new theater space also allows for more artistic possibilities than the original does, Victor said. If, for example, it would make more sense in a scene for Victor’s character to enter from the opposite side of the stage than the one she’s on, making that happen in the original theater would require her to go out into the audience, cross around behind the audience, come back up the other side.
“Talk about suspending disbelief!” she laughed.
Now, with the new space, all she would have to do is go backstage and come out the other side. “It just has more polish,” she said.
Victor started Happier Valley in 2015 and took over the space at 1 Mill Valley Road in 2018, after having taught improv “in every nook and cranny in the Valley,” she said. “If there’s been a space that costs $25 or less an hour to rent, I’ve probably put up a show or taught a class there.”
Victor, Benjamin, and Scott Braidman, Happier Valley’s general manager and artistic director, started thinking about expanding the space in 2023. Though Victor loved the previous theater, it had “a lot of, ‘Hey kids, let’s put on a show! My dad has a barn!’ energy to it,” she said. The new theater, by contrast, reflects the quality of the work and the experience that people bring to the stage, she added.
“It’s really thrilling to have this thing that’s been in our minds for three years to now be a real space that we can walk into and share with others,” said Benjamin. “It’s that feeling of, ‘Oh, we’ve been waiting for so long!’ It’s like Christmas morning, or Pam’s birthday morning. We get to play with our new toy now.”
At the grand-opening celebration, the new space’s name was announced: The Maybe Theater. The name comes from a story that Victor shares with all of her beginner improv students. In the Taoist parable of “The Maybe Farmer,” a farmer always says, in response to others’ comments that a situation must be certain doom or a great blessing, “Maybe.”
“We practice that a lot in improv, that the road to progress is never straight,” Victor said. “And there are moments that seem good or bad, but really, in the end, you really don’t know how things are going to turn out.”
The story inspired Sally Ekus —“board member, cast member, fundraiser extraordinaire,” as Victor called her — so much that she named her daughter Maybelline in its honor. The team, in turn, wanted to honor Ekus for her fundraising efforts, which brought in more than $100,000 for the theater, so they chose the name to pay tribute to her, her daughter and that story.
“I call her ‘Sally the Great,’” Victor said.
The project is still underway. The upcoming phase two will include adding new seating to accommodate a wider range of body types, plus more lighting and sound equipment, and everything else “that we don’t even know about, that we’ll need to do to further facilitate the joy and ease of our showgoers and our students,” Victor said.
One more immediate plan, though, is to convert the original performance space into a lobby with tables, chairs and lighting to allow people to connect with each other before and after shows.
“What I love most is fostering community. We foster a community of kindness, inclusion, and belonging,” Victor said. “It’s really important to us.”
Having a lobby will also allow for more performances overall, including back-to-back shows and longer shows with multiple acts.
“I’m really excited to see what, artistically, we are able to do with this new space what we haven’t done yet, just because we didn’t know it was a possibility or our previous space didn’t allow for that,” Benjamin said. “I think when we have some time to play and experiment in this space, we’ll start to see what the possibilities really are for new and different shows.”
For more information about Happier Valley Comedy, including a schedule of upcoming shows, visit happiervalley.com.