Hub and Spoke. Audio Collective.

This is Rumble Strip I'm Erica Hileman.

The first night the brownies were individually plaited.

I'm sorry. This is so stupid.

Okay, so the first night they were plaited, but then I realized that if they were on a platter,

people would be forced to pass the platter around and talk more. It's family style. It's better for the whole idea of the show.

For people to have to pick a little brownie or a big brownie or like half a brownie and then stick half a brownie back was like my favorite part of the show.

It was we didn't even get them plates, you know, it was like fingers and napkins and a lot of the servers were like is there forks and we're like you don't need a fork it's a brownie it's a brownie

that's Tara talking about the dessert for the show this past April at the Legion Hall in Hardwick. The idea for the show started at a baseball game up at Hayes and Union last spring, or in a way it did.

Rose Friedman and Tara Reese were in the early stages of starting the civic standard, which

isn't a community center exactly, and it's not a cultural organization either,

but it's a kind of magical concoction of both. For some reason most people think

of art when they hear the word culture or they think of cultural division when they hear the word culture

but what if culture was just whatever the people in your town want it to be and the main point is to give everyone in town excuses to get together.

So Rose and Tara were explaining this idea to Brenda at the game, and Brenda said that what she really

wanted was for them to make a mystery dinner

theater show. Nobody really thought that this would happen because Rose does make

theater but not mystery dinner theater and anyway where would you do something like that in Hardwick?

Months passed and the Civic Standard was born.

It took up residents in the old Hardwick Gazette building right in the middle of town and

quickly became a kind of public square, a meeting place. Its first big event was a

bonfire up at Butch's farm stand with free chili and hot chocolate and people from all over Hardwick came.

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