Black Box Youth Playhouse Managing Artistic Director Laura Richards Bakin steps out the door of the Black Box Arts Center on July 17. Tabitha Johnston

SHEPHERDSTOWN — This past week, Shepherdstown resident Laura Richards Bakin could be found in the Black Box Arts Center, busily wrapping up the details of the 501©3 nonprofit organization that she has served as managing artistic director of since 2007.

Her final day at the Black Box Arts Center, and the final day of her organization, will be this Sunday. The Roving Peregrine Theatre Company will then officially take over the Black Box Arts Center, and the Black Box Youth Playhouse, which has been providing youth programming out of the center since 2020, will be no more.

“It’s time to pass the torch. I think it’s going to be great,” Bakin said. “It’s a good group — everybody I’ve met so far is very vibrant and eager to produce art. They’re also very community oriented, like I am, so I feel that they will be giving back to the community and offering events to which everybody can afford to come. That was important to me, to choose a group like this, that is not doing what they’re doing for money but to engage the community in the arts.”

Bakin first fell in love with theater at the age of 10, when her mother took her to see a theatrical production for the first time.

She attended a high school with a renowned theater program and, during that time, worked with a few dinner theaters in the Washington metropolitan area. Her academic path then led her, with the help of a theater scholarship, to a college that specialized in theater, Saint Leo University, from which she graduated with a double major in musical theater and English. Her first job, after graduation, was at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.

Black Box Youth Playhouse Managing Artistic Director Laura Richards Bakin relaxes in the foyer of the Black Box Arts Center on July 17. Tabitha Johnston

“I went from academic theater to professional-level theater. For a while, I was in that community of theater people who are like, ‘Community theater? Isn’t that cute,'” Bakin said.

Bakin’s attitude soon changed, after that, especially after moving to Shepherdstown and beginning to raise a family with her husband.

“I became very aware of the fact that normal people can’t see professional theaters. If you don’t make a really comfortable income, you can’t see stuff at the National Theatre or Kennedy Center,” Bakin said. “I realized that you are disenfranchising most of your community if you don’t have community theaters. Without them, people can’t participate in creating a show or coming to see a show.”

One of Bakin’s first forays into community theater was at the Old Opera House in Charles Town, where she was cast in a role in a production of “The Crucible” in the early 2000s. A few years later, in 2007, she and a small group of community theater actors in the area started a theater company of their own, called Full Circle Theater. The company found and renovated a former shop, located at 113 South Princess Street in Shepherdstown, and turned it into their permanent performance space the very next year.

Over the next couple of years, Bakin changed the company’s name to that of the Black Box Arts Center, in recognition of the fact that its goal was to become a center for community artistic productions. That name became so connected with the building that, even after the organization’s name was changed a second time to that of the Black Box Youth Playhouse, when the organization began producing only children’s theatrical productions, Bakin and its board decided to keep the Black Box Arts Center as its name.

For this reason, the Roving Peregrine Theatre Company has also chosen to continue referring to the building as the Black Box Arts Center.

Bakin said she is thrilled to be able to finally retire from one of her full-time jobs — she also works full-time for the House of Representatives — and to pass on her organization’s assets to another capable, community-minded theatrical organization. With some extra time on her hands, she hopes to be able to explore her other theatrical interests, such as acting and writing stage plays.

“I went from being in the professional world, looking down on all of the community theater people, to becoming the biggest flyboy for community theater — it’s just crucial,” Bakin said.