RENSSELAERVILLE — The Hilltowns’ only professional theater company is calling it quits after a quarter of a century.

The founders of Impulse Theatre And Dance are dissolving the not-for-profit organization, which most recently found a home in Rensselaerville’s historic Conkling Hall.
"We had a good run," said Richard Creamer, who started the company in 1983 in New York City with his wife, Nadia.

Creamer said the decision to close was driven by health concerns and the desire to spend time on other projects.

The Creamers brought ITAD with them when they moved to Rensselaerville from New York 14 years ago. Their company has produced plays, musicals, and dance shows, drawing performers from New York as well as the Capital Region. The group has been recognized several times, including by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts.

Often, the company focused on lesser-known plays and performed with minimal set design, drawing attention to both the acting and the writing.
"It was really a great experience for everybody," Creamer said.

Through ITAD, Creamer, a 50-year veteran of the stage, got his first chance to direct a musical.
"That was really a hell of a lot of fun," he said.

He also remembers the audience reaction to the company’s first satirical play with a political message.
"Some people said that was kind of courageous," Creamer recalled.

In addition to mounting productions, ITAD was also a teaching company, Creamer said. One of its students, Ashston Holmes, who started at ITAD when he was 12, has landed a sizable role in the upcoming movie, History of Violence, directed by David Cronenberg and starring Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen.

The multiple-Oscar-nominated Harris has taken Holmes under his wing, Creamer said.
"He kept plugging away and working at it," Creamer said of Holmes. "This is really great for him."

Filling theater seats in rural towns was not always easy for ITAD. Creamer remembered summers spent at a small theater in Pallenville that lacked air conditioning.
"It was difficult to build an audience there because it was so out of the way, but it really was a lovely little theater," he said.

But, Creamer said, after word spread about the company, people started making the trip.
"I don’t want to boast, but we really ended up doing well there," he said.

Last summer, ITAD’s production of Gardner McKay’s play, Sea Marks, was the first major performance in a newly renovated Conkling Hall. The company presented several other shows there in the following year.

Though ITAD has been dissolved, Creamer said he will continue to bring theater to Rensselaerville. He’s currently writing a musical satire he intends to debut at Conkling Hall.
In his many years in theater, Creamer has been an actor, a writer, a director, and a producer, all this after, he said, "getting a late start." He didn’t try acting until he was a student at Boston University after a stint in the military.
"I fell in love with it absolutely," Creamer said. "It was like I found a new religion, an epiphany."
He described his thoughts watching a play from backstage for the first time: "I thought, ‘My God, it is magic. You move people. You reach people. You make them think. You make them cry.’"

Now, Creamer is trying to reach people in a different way. One of his first projects after ITAD is to write a novel, based on his childhood in Lynn, Mass. He’s halfway through his second draft.
"Now, we’ll see if I can find someone to publish it," he said, laughing.