Long before she agreed to become its new executive director, Lisa Reilly knew about the Emelin Theater.

“I knew it by reputation,” says Reilly. (That’s her at right, with Emelin co-presidents Seth Kaplan and Mark Ettenger, in a photo by Ricky Flores of The Journal News.) When she ran New York State Council on the Arts panels, the Emelin was often held up as a model for children’s programming.

Now she’ll have a hand in building on that reputation. She started last month by poring over attendance records and the $1.5 million budget to see how the Emelin ticks.

“It’s a chance to listen hard and to study a bit,” she says. “You have to know who you’re talking to. You have to understand who they are and what they want out of this.

“I didn’t come to the Emelin for it to be my theater,” she says. “The Emelin is Mamaroneck’s and Larchmont’s and Westchester’s theater.”

Reilly comes to Mamaroneck from the College of Staten Island Center for the Arts, a large performing-arts complex that includes four theaters. She has also been a consultant for community arts organizations on marketing, fundraising, board development, grant writing, executive searches and curriculum.

All of those skills would seem to be needed at the Emelin, which has endured a rocky 18 months.

In early 2007, shortly after announcing an ambitious $10 million capital expansion program, managing director John Raymond left.

That September, Michael Bush was named the theater’s new artistic director. The next month, Bush — who came from Manhattan Theater Club — launched the Next Stage capital campaign with a Glen Island gala starring Leslie Uggams.

The project would have expanded the theater’s stage and seating capacity (from 250 to 399) and added a film-only theater and a 60-seat “black box” experimental theater.

But Bush left abruptly in June, having programmed a festival of cabaret and theater and just one mainstage theatrical production, the dark comedy “Murderers,” which he directed.
And Next Stage has been shelved.

Mark Ettenger, who, with Seth Kaplan, became co-president of the Emelin board when Bush left, said programs should come before construction.

“We concluded that the theater’s focus should be on programming and expanding its audience in this time period and that (rather than) taking on an ambitious capital raise ahead of programming in this economy, we should wait until the programming builds, the audience builds and the economy is better,” he says.

The timing of that decision was more gradual than definite, says Ettenger, more of a realization that the climate wasn’t right.

Some of the money that had been raised by Next Stage has been put into programming and into fixing the theater’s roof and its heating and air-conditioning system, Ettenger says.

It is now left to Reilly to plan the Emelin’s next stage, one that doesn’t involve capital fundraising.

Reilly sees the Emelin as a classic performing-arts-center model, presenting works on several fronts: film, children’s programming, music and live theater.

Since Bush’s departure, the Emelin has not produced theater, which had been a staple over its 36-year history.

“Live theater still has a very important place at the Emelin,” Reilly says. “There’s no question that there will be live theater on the stage at the Emelin. ”

Ettenger says that an audience that routinely goes to theater in Manhattan comes to the Emelin with high expectations.

“Having live theater here is really important to us, the board,” he says. “It’s been on hiatus because of circumstances, but it’s now figuring out a new, fresh, bright, exciting way to do it.”

Adds co-president Kaplan: “We want Lisa to help us think that through, to show us the alternatives with the goal of presenting something that’s culturally worthwhile and financially responsible. There are 29 ways to cook that cake.”

One recipe will be on view when the Emelin lends its stage to the Purchase Repertory Theatre for David Ives’ “All in the Timing” on Feb. 27 and 28 and March 1. It’s a case where an existing production of a high-caliber theater company — conservatory students at Purchase College — is presented in Mamaroneck.

The Emelin is not on the hook as a producer of the show but reaps the rewards of bringing live theater to the stage. And the Purchase students get to play on a different stage and encounter a new audience.

“That collaborative model is something that we may be able to use,” Reilly says.

Reilly and her co-presidents say they want to build on the level of trust that Emelin audiences have for Arnie Fleischer’s bluegrass series, Marshall Fine’s wildly popular film club and the shows for kids.

“I first got to know of the Emelin in the mid-’90s because of its hallmark children’s programming,” Reilly says. “I want to build on the great work that’s been done here, listen to what the community wants, and keep the Emelin fiscally responsible so it’s here for another 36 years and beyond.”

Kaplan says a capital campaign could be revisited when the economy stabilizes — and when the audience demand is such that it makes sense.

He suggests the board will know when the time is right “when people are saying: ‘How come I can’t get a ticket to this?’ ”

Reilly says that’s a reachable goal.

“We want people to feel that this is the place to be before considering expansion,” Kaplan says.

“As opposed to ‘If you build it, they will come,’ ” adds Ettenger, “it’s like: ‘Get them to come and we’ll figure out how big to build.’ ”

Emelin Theater
Where: 153 Library Lane, Mamaroneck.
Web: www.emelin.org.
Call: 914-698-0098
Coming up: Here are some of the acts who will play the Emelin between now and May: “Beatlemania Now,” Loudon Wainwright III, Bo Bice, Lesley Gore, “Alexander and the Terrible…,” Sones de México, Los Lobos, Carole & Paula, Janis Ian, “If You Give a Pig a Pancake…,” and Tom Chapin

The life of (Lisa) Reilly

Lisa Reilly, the Emelin Theater’s new executive director, grew up in central Massachusetts — and Atlanta, Philadelphia and New Jersey — which usually prompts people to wonder if she was an Army brat.

“In fact, I was exactly the opposite — kind of a hippie brat, with a VW microbus, the whole nine yards,” she says with a laugh.

Reilly earned undergrad and master’s degrees at Colgate University and taught at Syracuse University while doing Ph.D work in literary theory. She ended up as executive director at Earlville Opera House, near Colgate.

Earlville is a similar size to the Emelin, about 300 seats, although the upstate opera house and the suburban theater she now heads are worlds apart.

“I had 300 seats in a village of 800 people,” she says, “but many of the artists who have been here, I would have been booking at Earlville.”

When she left Earlville after a decade for the College of Staten Island (“CSI,” as she calls it), the tiny theater had added two art galleries, a store and a restaurant.

Her tenure at Earlville taught her everything she knows about presenting shows at a performing arts center, she says, because she learned it all on the job.

“When I first started booking in Earlville, I was so naive about it that I thought: ‘300 seats? How hard could that be?’ ” she recalls. “I would never say such a thing again.”

But that enthusiasm served her well, she says.

“I learned a tremendous amount by coming down a peg from that initial outlook, but I also learned to embrace that level of enthusiasm. I believe, when I book things, that everybody has to see them.

“When you love theater and music and performance of all varieties and you see something that excites you and gets you going, it’s so wonderful to get to share that with people.

“If I can’t get excited about a show, then I’m not doing the right stuff. If I don’t feel that enthusiasm, then why should anyone else?”