10 // COASTWEEKEND.COM
Behind-the-scenes powerhouse Judith Niland retires from helming the Astor Street Opry Company
By ANDREW TONRY
Photos by DANNY MILLER
The numbers go some-
thing like this:
31 years.
3,000 actors.
1,500 performances.
120,000 tickets.
This is the legacy of
Judith Niland, the inde-
fatigable, do-everything
impresario of the Astor
Street Opry Company, who
is stepping away on opening
night of the 32nd annual
production of “Shanghaied
in Astoria.”
But statistics hardly cap-
ture the totality of Niland’s
impact.
“Judith Niland has been
one of my most dearest
friends of my entire life,”
says Markus Brown, who
got involved with the Opry
Company some 15 years
ago. “She’s like walking,
talking magic. She has given
people second and third
and fourth and ¿fth tries to
redeem themselves. It can’t
even be said, everything
she’s done.”
“All the actors, we’re all
friends,” Brown adds. “And
we all have the same opin-
ion of Judith: She’s a saint.
She’s an unsung soldier in
the community.”
—
“The ¿rst memory I have
is meeting [Opry Company
founder] Dr. Dell Corbet at
a bar with some friends,”
Niland says. “He tried to
get me and my husband into
theater, and we both jumped
in with both feet.”
Formed in 1984, the Astor Street Opry Company moved locations several times before settling
into the old Roy’s Maytag building at 129 W. Bond St. The nonprofit organization has grown from
one production of its flagship “Shanghaied in Astoria” musical each year to three original musical
melodramas, children’s and teen theater, live stage dramas, comedies and other events.
Judith Niland is retiring this summer from the Astor Street
Opry Company after over 30 years of involvement with the
theater. In the course of her time with the Opry Company, she
has built sets and run lighting booths, wrote scripts, directed,
recruited volunteers, sought sponsorships, directed market-
ing, production, concessions and more.
“It seemed fun,” Niland
says, “like something to do.”
She began in costuming,
sewing spats — shoe covers.
“I watched my spats
dance around,” Niland
remembers. “The feet were
at eye level. I was like:
‘I did that! I did those
spats!’ Then I was hooked.
Then I wanted to do it all. I
wanted to make sets. I want-
ed to see if we could make
the business work better.”
And, indeed, Niland truly
did it all.
To create a performance
space, she cleared waist-
high rubble from lobby of
the then-dilapidated Astor
Hotel. She built sets, light-
ing booths, wrote scripts,
directed, recruited volun-
teers, sought sponsorships,
directed marketing, produc-
tion, concessions and so on.
“I pretty much have
done every
theater job,”
Niland says.
“My attitude
was: I couldn’t
ask someone to
do something
I wouldn’t do
myself. I needed
to know how
much was being asked of
the volunteers.”
It wasn’t so much the art,
though, that ¿rst attracted
Niland.
“I was more interested
in the management than I
was in the acting for a long
time,” she says. “Business
management was more in-
teresting to me. It
was a nice combi-
nation of art and
management. I
enjoyed that.”
And as
a nonpro¿t,
working with an
all-volunteer cast
and crew, there
was plenty of business to
keep up with. For years, the
Astor Street Opry Company
struggled to ¿nd a perma-
nent home. From the Astor
Hotel, the theater group
moved to the Eagles Hall,
where Niland had to build a
bathroom and stairwell, to
the Banker’s Suite building,
tried out a church, moved
to the Finnish Meat Market
before ¿nally settling in the
former Roy’s Maytag Home
Appliance building, the
company’s current home.
“I’m born with resilien-
cy,” says Niland, “and that’s
what it is, really. I never
took to school. I never took
to the normal education
system. I never was good at
being tested. What I’m real-
ly good at is learning from
my mistakes — eliminate