Adirondack Studios (ADKS), a company that provides creative solutions for designers, artists, producers, and owners in the themed entertainment industry, has shared an exclusive excerpt from Fifty Years of Making a Scene: Adirondack Studios 1975-2025, as it celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.
Fifty Years of Making a Scene: Adirondack Studios 1975-2025 is written by Bob Barnett with a foreword by Michael Blau. It is edited by Michael Blau, Tom Lloyd, Mike Marko and Clara Rice. The book will be published in limited release later this year.
When Tom Lloyd, Chris Detmer, and Walter Blake opened Adirondack Studios’ doors 50 years ago in Warrensburg, New York, the plan was simply to build scenery for opera companies, corporate events, Broadway and off-Broadway shows in a part of the country they’d come to love: New York State’s Adirondack Mountains.
Few would have imagined that Tom Lloyd and Chris Detmer would partner in business when they first met in 1966 at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois.
As part of the Acting program, Tom had crew duties helping student productions get on stage. Since he had spent his high school summers working production with the Lake George Opera, where his father was general director, it was a natural fit for him to pick up a hammer and stretch muslin to make stage flats for Northwestern’s opera program.
Chris managed the shop. Six years older than Tom, he was smart, sharp, and driven, though with a quieter demeanor. With a gift for Shakespeare, he was finishing his graduate degree in acting at Northwestern after serving in the Marines in Vietnam.
Tom and Chris hit it off, becoming an unlikely pair of friends as they framed out opera flats, turning lumber, cloth, and paint into bohemian garrets and ducal palaces for star-crossed lovers and villainous baritones.
Setting the stage…
By spring of 1971, Tom had transferred to Hunter College in New York City and changed his major to theater production. While finishing his studies, Tom managed the Hunter scene shop and built a circle of friends in the theatre tech world. Chief among them was Walter Blake, a carpenter and stagehand at Hunter who would become one of ADKS’ future founders.
Chris had already decamped from Northwestern, leaving acting behind to move to New York City. He met Walter through Tom, and soon the two of them were building sets and props for off- and off-off-Broadway shows in a former dairy barn in Manhattan. Meanwhile, Tom was picking up his own gigs, stage-managing opera productions around the country.
Each summer, Tom returned to Lake George in upstate New York. He was now production manager for the Lake George Opera Company’s annual season, working his way up from set construction to lighting and sound to management.
One summer, he invited Chris and Walt to join him working crew. They could swelter through another summer in Manhattan or they could enjoy the Adirondacks and work their tails off for next to no money. They took Tom up on his offer, not only building the sets but swapping out the repertory shows on an almost nightly basis.
It became a yearly pattern. They worked in New York City during the year with Chris and Walt at the shop downtown and Tom uptown, now technical director at Manhattan School of Music, or all three on the road with one of Chris’s corporate gigs. Summers they would be up in Lake George, building sets and enjoying the outdoors.
Walt was the one who finally suggested that the three of them join forces and start their own company upstate. They all loved the natural beauty and the unhurried life during their summers with the opera company. They hit up a couple members of the Lake George Opera board, who helped them secure a bank loan. Walter found them a building on County Road 28, outside of Warrensburg, a small town just north of Lake George. They bought it.
They were now proud owners of a column-free, 6,000-square-foot, one-story building. Their only neighbors were conifer trees and the highway department next to their parking lot. The name for their fledgling company had a double meaning: Adirondack Scenic.
It was 1975. All they needed were clients.
“You are where again…?”
To ensure access to their desired markets, they registered the company with IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, as a union shop. The union president in New York didn’t know quite what to make of them, but he signed them up anyway.
He wasn’t the only one who questioned the practicality of their upstate start-up.
Tom approached regional opera companies he had worked with or knew through his father. There was always that question, “You are where again…?” Few were willing to make the trip to check out their operations, regardless of how “scenic” the locale might be. It was clear the wooing would take more time than the three of them realized.
They spun their Rolodexes, worked the phones, and drove down to Manhattan regularly to build contacts, purchase fabrics, paint, and stage hardware, and secure any business they could drum up. They recruited local craftspeople and artisans. They built sets and props for off-Broadway theatres, performing arts groups, and Chris’ corporate clients and opera companies that lacked their own shops.
To keep the lights on and the mortgage paid, they took turns going out on the road to make money. Tom stage-managed operas in Boston and D.C., Chris coordinated and managed corporate meetings, and Walt hired himself out as a carpenter for touring shows. During one particularly lean period, Chris offered “Basic Nail,” a class that familiarized local housewives with tools and how to perform basic home repair and construction.
All three did a little of everything. Over time, Chris became the “money man” having grown up with a stockbroker for a father. Tom leaned more to the creative, engaged behind the scenes with so many productions, aware how every detail contributed to the performance. Walt helped manage the shop.
The early days required flexibility and focus. All the early clients were in live entertainment. That’s how “the show must go on!” got baked into the DNA of what would eventually become Adirondack Studios.
Those opening years were not easy, and neither Tom, Chris, nor Walt could have predicted the ups, downs, twists, turns, stories and adventures to follow.
In the next episode, we’ll discover how Adirondack Studios extended its reach out of New York and opera into corporate events, theme parks, museums…and the rest of the world.
Header Image: Chris Detmer and Tom Lloyd .
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