Stone Circle Theatre — Rody Prieto

The Venue

What is Stone Circle Theatre?

Photo by Aidamma Nichole Ondo, Uprooted

Stone Circle Theatre is a community arts venue project that started in 2023 within Ridgewood Presbyterian Church. After the previous leadership left suddenly in summer of 2024, the remaining collaborators decided to not only preserve the theater, but to revamp it and make it a fun and sustainable community arts project.

We’ve gone from a show a week at Stone Circle to up to 30 events in a single month in November of 2025.

The Space

Living within the Sanctuary of Ridgewood Presbyterian Church, Stone Circle offers a safe and open-minded community arts space for people to express themselves! The team is made up of a diverse set of dedicated volunteers who are both visual and audio tech nerds with all levels of community arts interest and experience.

Saving the Theater, A History

Photo by Ryan Muir, Discovery Zone

Step 1: Fix Everything

In the summer of 2024, the previous leadership of Stone Circle Theatre had a large-scale falling out with the church where they very quickly left and abandoned the project. What transpired was a couple staff members and I looking at each other and asking, “Welp- are we going to keep this alive or not?”

I took over as director of operations and marketing while my collaborators took over on the financial and booking/outreach fronts. In a space like ours, everyone does a bit of everything!

I had just enough previous business leadership experience at this point to fool myself into thinking that this was something that myself and my two main collaborators were ready to take on. (thisisfine.jpeg)

The truth was that while we all genuionely loved the space and the mission, there was very little that could have actually prepared us. This was a passion side project started by the previous leadership of the church and was maintained as such.

How We Pulled It Off

The first thing to be repaired was the relationship with the church. I created a formal plan to show the pastor in order to prove that we were taking this project seriously. She was relieved to see some organization and allowed us to continue using the the space. This was our first major win as a team and really put the wind in our sails. In hindsight, this was a great omen for the large amount of politicking that I was going to be learning as well. Who woulda thought?

There was virtually no organization or standardization for bookings resulting in truly-lamentable double bookings and surprise unstaffed events. I was able to work with the new team to redesign the booking system, moving from scattered emails, text messages and napkin-contracts to a fully integrated CRM (a digital marketing one I adapted from a previous position) to handle all of our bookings and the information gathering process.

For a volunteer or low-paid team, internal processes need to be as easy as possible and dare I say, fun to complete. Watching efficient mechanisma that click together scratches a brain itch of mine, so desiging the Stone Circle backend became a marriage of a couple of my favorite things, DIY music and functional operations. All of this needed to be done for extremely low-cost or free. The only real-world answer to that is a little something I like to call, ✨creativitiy✨.

You can choose two: good, easy or cheap. I chose to completely give myself to this project and exercise genuine “integrative thinking and innovation” in every area of the project that needed attention.

The next two years are defined by fixing and evolving most processes that we implemented. I’m proud to say that the complete redesigns of the booking, staffing/hiring, social media and budget were some of my proudest achievements in my career. The venue is now funding itself, gaining in notoriety, in no debt and we have moved on from the volunteer staffing model so that our staff can actually live! Most admin work is still volunteer but hey, it’s a marathon, not a race!

There were crisis (plural) galore and that meant that it was my job to rally the team to keep it going.

“If it wasn’t already clear, SCT is one of my proudest achievements. I built a venue for a community I care about, mostly unpaid, because I thought it was worth saving.”

Community

Photo by Ryan Muir, Tristan Allen

Impact

Even when we began, Stone Circle was known for being a beautiful space where all sorts of eclectic events happen. Best of all, our mission is to be a safe space for all sorts of people. This makes us one of the few all-ages spaces that exist in NYC. This is especially amazing considering the skyrocketing costs of rent, utilities and general items in our current economic environment. Hence the ✨creativity✨ I cited earlier.

We have many organizers and subcultures that rely on our venue now for their events. We maintain it’s beauty and most importantly, its ease of use.

In DIY, there is a very thin line between sustainability in practice and accessibility. The hardest thing to maintain in this space is that balance. Stone Circle Theatre’s larger community is made of people who genuinely care about the local scene. Those people also need to be able to survive while doing thier art. Our goal is to have as much of both as possible!

Our world often feels like it is constantly trapped. If you’re not careful you can be taken advantage of. I want Stone Circle Theatre to prove that a new way is possible if the communal efforts are applied in healthy ways.

We have served countless theater companies, dance companies, and children’s educational groups. We support musicians from experimental ambient and indie folk to hardcore punk and dungeon synth. We consistently run benefit shows for community, local and international causes.

What’s Next

Stone Circle will keep our upward trajectory for as long as the universe allows us. Check out our website and our socials for new neighborhood partnerships, interesting events community support.