RENSSELAERVILLE — Tara McCormick-Hostash says she fell in love at age 14.

This was not an ephemeral teenage crush; this was a love that started young and became an all-encompassing passion destined to last a lifetime.

“When I was 14,” she says in this week’s Enterprise podcast, “I did my first community theater play right here at Conkling Hall. It was called ‘Charlie’s Aunt,’ and it was directed by Richard Creamer — and I fell in love with Conkling Hall.

“I fell in love with storytelling within Conkling Hall. I fell in love with storytelling to my neighbors, to my family. So, when I went to the big city to live all the dreams, it was great. But I just wanted to tell a story in an intimate space.”

McCormick-Hostash, telling the story of her own life, describes growing up “in a little house on a hill” in Rensselaerville. “We always had horses and I thought that was normal … I thought everyone grew up riding horses.”

She and her brother and sister were largely left to their own devices for entertainment. “We only had three TV channels,” she says.

So McCormick-Hostash started producing plays in her family’s living room with her siblings as the actors.

She grew into performing for Impulse Theatre and Dance. ITAD was founded by Richard Creamer and his wife, Nadia, in New York City in 1983 and moved to the Helderberg Hilltowns when the Creamers did, dissolving in 2005.

But not before inspiring McCormick-Hostash. She left the Hilltowns for the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City.

“When I came home I wanted to still act and perform. I can’t not,” she said. “I had had my children and they were babies, and I was like, I want to create something here.

Some family and community members met in her aunt’s dining room in 2011 and R’ville Stage Creations was formed.

The name R’ville was chosen because a sense of place is important, McCormick-Hostash said, but she recalled how difficult it was for her to spell Rensselaerville as a 4-year-old.

R’ville Stage Creation’s first play was a classic, “Arsenic and Old Lace.”

“It’s about two very sweet old ladies who poison men because they believe they are doing a charity,” McCormick-Hostash told The Enterprise at the time of the production.

“It’s definitely very dark,” she went on. “And, of course, there are other characters who are incredibly interesting. One of their nephews believes he’s Teddy Roosevelt, and every time he runs up the stairs, he yells, ‘Charge!’”

Each of these characters truly believes in who he is — “even the nephew,” she said, and, if this play has a message, it’s that you should believe in who you are.

The troupe hasn’t always stuck with the tried and true, going on to produce the comedy “Five Women Wearing the Same Dress” about five bridesmaids who discover none of them really like the bride; “Godspell”; “The Vagina Monologues”; and “The Rocky Horror Show” — twice.

R’ville Stage Creations also has children’s plays and camps, and has put on several original cabarets.

McCormick-Hostash describes R’ville Stage Creations’ recent growth as “explosive.”

After the isolation imposed by the pandemic, she said, “We were all just ready to break free.”

She went on, “As a singer, I had no one to sing with, no one to play the piano for me … so I actually picked up the guitar to play with myself.”

She calls what happened for the arts once the shutdown regulations were lifted The Corona-sance.

McCormick-Hostash says that performing live theater, as opposed to watching a film, is “a tactile art — it’s right there; it’s not just visual.”

She goes on, “It’s the exchange of energy that happens in the air between the audience and the performers in that moment.”

After weeks or months of rehearsals, where magic also happens, she says, “The audience wants to exchange the energy with the performers.” Each performance is different because of how the audience reacts and interacts, she says.

McCormick-Hostash, who directs musicals for her alma mater, Greenville High School, says she always explains to the students that each audience will be different. “I try to prepare them for all sorts of different curveballs.”

McCormick-Hostash loves Conkling Hall, despite its limited 17-by-17-foot stage with a very small backstage and no backstage entrance. Built as a Methodist Church in 1839, the hall became a community center in the early 1900s and is now maintained by the Friends of Conkling Hall.

“They deeply care about the community, the building, the fellowship,” said McCormick-Hostash.

R’ville Stage Creations is currently rehearsing “The Underpants,” based on a 1910 German farce, “Die Hosen,” by Carl Sternheim, reworked by Steve Martin a quarter-century ago.

“His comedy just aligns with my heart,” said McCormick-Hostash of Martin. While the show has both physical comedy and innuendo, causing “roll-on-the-floor” laughter, she said, “Hopefully, it should make some people stop and assess themselves.”

Audience members may well ask themselves, “Do they see archetypes in the play and can they learn the lessons?”

McCormick-Hostash goes on, “You know, that’s what storytelling is: It’s each one of those characters is within us. So, when we’re mirrored, we can hopefully take a lesson away from it and be better.”

Sternheim’s original play, she said, just nailed archetypal characters.

“I think some people will really see today’s society reflected within 1910 German society …. There are some serious moments in the play where, if we’re looking hard enough, that truth is there and it’s about to happen.

“And we have to take that in consideration while we’re telling the story, to understand that the world wars are about to happen and what’s happening in Germany at this time.”

The plot revolves around a young, newly married housewife, Louise, whose bloomers fall down in public, causing her boorish husband to berate her, afraid he’ll lose his job. The scandal attracts two men who vie for Louise’s attention.

The star of the show, Lily Lamoree as Louise, came up through McCormick-Hostash’s summer program as did another of the actors, Hudson Turon.

“I’m planting seeds along the way that these kids will grow up being storytellers and want to continue some sort of art form,” she said.

About the two young actors in “The Underpants,” she went on, “I’ve already been able to give them the ideas and the flow and they just go with it. And I’m so proud, so proud.”

The “Underpants” cast is an ensemble cast. If a cast doesn’t work as an ensemble, McCormick-Hostash says, it will fail. To create an ensemble, she says, “We play a lot of theater games, we do a lot of work.”

Asked for an example of a theater game, McCormick-Hostash described “Improv Yoga,” where she might say, “Hey, remember the other day, we were doing that yoga pose? You know it. You know that yoga pose. Remind me what it was so that I can show everyone and we can all do it together.”

Whoever answers would throw out a random name of a pose like “the leaping zebra.”

“I would perform some ridiculous physical thing and everyone would follow and we would all stay in character and say, ‘Oh, wonderful, wonderful.’”

Besides providing just a physical warm-up, said McCormick-Hostash, “It gets us comfortable just throwing out words that might not make sense.”

Rehearsals, she says, are like a bubbling cauldron. “We just pour everything into the cauldron … try new stuff … Once the trust is there, they’re free; they’re free to express themselves.”

She goes on, “You have to create a safe space … That’s why rehearsals are closed … because it’s personal.”

The stories told by plays at Conkling Hall have a ripple effect in the community. “I can see the effect that my stories can have ….,” says McCormick-Hostash. “I can see it reflected in people’s eyes. I can see it reflected in their behavior regarding our organization. They respect us. They trust us to put out good work.”

She concludes by pointing to the message on the T-shirt she is wearing, which was created for “The Rocky Horror Show.” The black T-shirt says in white letters: Dream it. Be it.”

“You can dream a lot of things …,” says McCormick-Hostash, “but you have to be it. You can’t just dream and you can’t just be. You have to do both. So dream it and be it.”                                                            

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“The Underpants” will play at Conkling Hall, at 8 Methodist Hill Road, in Rensselaerville on Father’s Day weekend.

“So if you need ideas for Dad, I have got you covered; check that off your list,” said the play’s director, Tara McCormick-Hostash.

The show runs Thursday through Saturday, June 15 to 17, at 7:30 p.m. and on Father’s Day, June 18, at 3 p.m.

Tickets, which cost $21, may be ordered through the website: https://rville-stage-creations.square.site/s/shop.