By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University
“Welcome to the theater.” As the smell of popcorn wafts in the air, movie-goers come in and take their seats – in a theater building that is more than a century old.
Today we’ll learn about a group of volunteers who have restored their historic movie theater building and are operating it for their rural community.
Dan Brooks and his wife Kelsey Mai are volunteer managers of the Strand Theater in Sharon Springs. Dan grew up in Colorado Springs. He does carpentry and residential remodeling. Ten years ago, they moved back to Sharon Springs where Kelsey grew up.
One of the historic buildings in Sharon Springs is the Strand Theater, which was built in 1921 by a man named W. E. Ward. Ward was the editor of the Western Times and a local attorney. According to legend, he was attending a show and fell through a trap door. Ward decided that a new movie theater was needed.
He led the construction of the Strand Theater. Apparently the Strand was a common name for theaters in the old days, taking its name from London’s Strand district which had been a hub for musical and theatrical performances.
The new Strand Theater in Sharon Springs was a showplace. One newspaper account reported that a traveler said it was the “finest in western Kansas, and would do credit to a much bigger place.” Construction happened during a building boom in the town, because the theater, high school and township hall were all built within six months of each other.
In the era of silent movies, an eleven-piece orchestra accompanied the shows. That changed with the transition to the talkies. In modern times, the theater transitioned to a digital projector.
The ownership of the movie theater changed hands through the years and became property of the community in 1998. It continued to operate with volunteers.
The building itself began to show its age. A leaky roof allowed damage to happen in places below.
Then the pandemic hit. “Attendance never really recovered from Covid,” Brooks said.
In 2023, a community meeting was held to determine if the theater should be shut down due to needed upgrades and low attendance.
A new generation stepped up. A new set of people were elected to the board, and Dan Brooks and Kelsey Mai were elected as volunteer managers. “When I was a kid, my dad, David Mai, ran the projector, so I grew up in this theater,” Kelsey said. The volunteers developed a plan to retain, restore and continue operating the movie theater.
“Let’s at least keep the building from caving in,” Brooks said. They committed a lot of volunteer labor and received grants from the local bank and from CHS, the ag retail business with a local unit in Sharon Springs.
At first they planned to take out only the floorboards, but when they got into that task, they found more rotting wood below. “We decided we needed to go whole hog,” Brooks said.
Not only did they do wholesale repairs, they took the opportunity to add an old-fashioned soda fountain and a counter where they sell candy by the scoop.
In October 2024, the Strand Theater reopened. “We do two showings a week, on Saturday and Sunday,” Brooks said. “We show a different movie every week.” The theater operates entirely with volunteers.
This is a remarkable accomplishment in a rural community such as Sharon Springs, population 751 people. Now, that’s rural.
In fact, the Strand Theater recently hosted a showing of a documentary about tornado chasers, and 75 people attended. That means the attendance at the theater was equivalent to 10% of the entire population of its town. Is there another theater in Kansas that could make such a claim?
“It gets people together,” Brooks said. “The community is the most important part.”
For more information, see www.strandtheater.org.
Welcome to the theater. We salute Dan Brooks, Kelsey Mai, and all the volunteers who are making a difference by saving this building and operating this movie theater for the benefit of the community.
Enjoy the show.
Audio and text files of Kansas Profiles are available at https://www.huckboydinstitute.org/kansas-profiles. For more information about the Huck Boyd Institute, interested persons can visit http://www.huckboydinstitute.org.
