By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN


LANGDON, North Dakota - Every Friday through Monday night, Amy Freier awaits the faithful at the historic Roxy Theater.

“You know who comes,” said Ms. Freier, one of 200 volunteers in this town of roughly 2,000 who are keeping the Roxy’s neon glowing.

“They’re part of the theater.” In an age of streaming videos and DVDs, the small town Main Street movie theater is thriving in North Dakota, the result of a movement to keep storefront movie houses, with their jewel-like marquees and worn facades, at the center of community life.

In small-town theaters across the state, tickets are about $5, the buttered popcorn $1.25 and the companionship free.

“If we were in Los Angeles or Phoenix, the only reason to go to a movie would be to see it,’’ said Cecile Wehrman, a newspaper editor who, with members of the nonprofit Meadowlark Arts Council, resuscitated the Dakota in Crosby . “But in a small town, the theater is like a neighborhood. It’s the seeand- be-seen, bring everyone and sit together kind of place.’’

The revival is not confined to North Dakota; movie houses like the Alamo in Bucksport, Maine, the Luna in Clayton, New Mexico, and the Strand in Old Forge, New York, are flourishing as well. But in the American Great Plains, where stop signs can be 80 kilometers apart and the nearest multiplex is 320 kilometers round trip, the town theater - one screen, one show a night, weekends only - is an anchoring force .

It is a tradition that comes with a delicate social choreography (kids up front, teenagers in back - away from prying parental eyes) and in spite of nature’s ferocity (winter temperatures can freeze the coconut oil for the popcorn machine).

Steve Hart, 40, a farmer in Langdon who helped revive the Roxy, tells of a paralyzing Christmas blizzard several years ago. The phone started ringing shortly afterward.

“Do you have a movie?” people wanted to know.

“An hour later,” he recalled, “there were 90 people on Main Street, even though there was only one path through the drifts . ”

To Tim Kennedy, a professor of landscape architecture who has surveyed the state’s little theaters for a book, the communal will of rural towns that keep theaters going represents “buildings as social capital,” forged “outside the franchise cinemas and their ubiquitous presence at the malls.”

Of the 31 operating historic theaters identified by Mr. Kennedy, 19 are community-run, little changed from the days when itinerant projectionists packed their automobile s with reels of film and hit the road. Many retain the soundproof “cry rooms” for fussy babies.

For older residents, theaters are a link to a rapidly vanishing past. Movie rentals are the biggest threat, said Babe Belzer, 74, who led the drive to restore the Lyric .

“If you can get a whole living room of kids watching a movie for three bucks, what a deal,” she said.

“But at the theater,” she continued, “the phone doesn’t ring, and there isn’t anyone at your door. It’s kind of the heart and soul of our town.”