Imagine a librarian, leading a life of quiet monotony, checking in books that have been returned through the overnight slot at a library in Hoofddorp, Holland. One day he finds in the bin a tattered Baedeker’s travel guide, 113 years overdue. Rather than reshelving the book, he surprises himself by embarking on an around-the-world quest—from a laundry in London to a transportation building in Germany to a post office in Dingtao, China, and from there to New York and Australia and beyond. His journey takes him across several continents and two millennia in search of the person who borrowed the book. And, more importantly, to find out why it took so long to return.

That’s the premise of the play Underneath the Lintel, by Glen Berger, a Hamilton-Gibson Productions staging on September 26 to 28 and October 3 and 4 at the Warehouse Theatre in Wellsboro.

“It’s a twisty mystery of a tale,” says Thomas Putnam, paraphrasing a line from the play. He’s the artistic director and founder of the community theater company also known as HG, and he’s reprising his 2008 role as the librarian. It’s a one-man show that resonates with him.

The librarian is the sleuth. He collects clues in his travels: significant scraps that point to the identity of the perpetrator of the long-overdue-book crime. A pair of well-worn trousers, a used tram ticket, a veterinarian’s report on a lost dog, a love letter, a receipt cryptically signed only with the initial A followed by a period. Whether it’s a man, a myth, or a miracle he’s chasing, the librarian is ultimately on a journey of self-discovery.

As the lights come up, the librarian—looking a bit like TV’s rumpled detective Lieutenant Frank Columbo—shuffles onto the stage. The set is pared down to a chair and a chalkboard, a screen for showing slides, and a slide projector. He carries a battered suitcase. Inside it are the clues, or what he calls “the evidences.” They are each meticulously researched, catalogued, and labeled with an identification number. After all, the librarian is adept at these skills by virtue of his profession.

Around his neck on a cord he wears a date stamper which contains, in the librarian’s words, “every date there ever was.” He elaborates on its significance for the audience, spinning the mechanical dials. Everyone’s birth date is in the stamper. Death dates, too. We’re just not aware of them yet. Apocalyptic disasters take place on any given day, as do commonplace fatal mishaps. “Still. We shall proceed,” he says, a catchphrase repeated throughout the play. Life goes on, as has HG since its inception thirty-five years ago.

Thomas, born and raised in Pontiac, Michigan, spent every summer of his youth in Wellsboro, where his mother, the daughter of Dr. Jesse and Alma Webster, grew up. It was his grandmother Alma who persuaded him to come to Tioga County in 1974 to earn his degree in education at what was then Mansfield State College. He found jobs after graduation in both public and private schools, and loved teaching.

And then, in 1991, he and some friends decided to start a community theater.

“I wanted to be in plays, I wanted to direct plays, and there was nothing around at that time as far as community theater in Tioga County,” Thomas explains. “We organized our first theater in a little church on Route 6 east of Wellsboro. It was a former farm implements building. There was a room in front for the church, and a huge garage in back where the tractors and machinery used to be serviced. There were big bay doors we could open up. We bought some scenery lights. A guy in Mansfield who ran a boxing gym gave us a platform we pushed down to one end for a stage. We borrowed folding chairs from the chamber of commerce. The first play we did was The Miracle Worker.”

He laughs, remembering all the power washing it took to get the machine oil off the floor before they could stage that first production. But there was an immediate payoff. “It was summertime. We kept the garage doors open during the play and poured lemonade at intermission.”

Thomas and his theater company (named for his maternal grandmother Alma Hamilton Webster and his paternal grandmother Clara Gibson Putnam) wandered around Tioga County in search of a permanent home. They staged productions at local elementary and high school auditoriums. They performed in the old Davis Furniture building and the county courthouse in Wellsboro, and at Mansfield University.

Eventually they set down roots at the Warehouse Theatre, now part of Wellsboro’s Deane Center for the Performing Arts. The old brick building was once a car repair garage, reminiscent of the old farm implements building where HG got its start. The first play they staged at their new home was Underneath the Lintel.

“The artistic planning committee wanted to bring back some plays from the past to commemorate our thirty-fifth season,” Thomas says. Lintel with its cast of one seemed to be a good balance following Annie, HG’s summer musical with its cast of over fifty. A bit of a mystery, though, surrounds “the evidences”—all the scraps the librarian, AKA Thomas in that first staging, uses to determine who borrowed the Baedeker. They are nowhere to be found.

“I know we had them in a box in the back room,” Thomas says. “I remember saying to myself, ‘Will we ever use them again?’ I just don’t remember what the answer was.” Like the librarian, ever in search of clues.

Near the end of the play, the librarian tells the audience he deliberately carved the words “I WAS HERE” with a sharp letter opener on his work desk at the Hoofddorp library, lest he be forgotten. Thomas Putnam has metaphorically carved those words on the community theater he founded.

“The librarian, in spite of all that happens along his journey, is determined to find worth and beauty in life, and to be remembered,” Thomas says. “There are other things in my life I’m particularly proud to have accomplished, but I suppose HG is how most people will remember me.”

He pauses for a moment. “Still. We shall proceed.”

There will be time for a lively give-and-take dialogue between the audience and Thomas and his stage crew after each performance. Run time is approximately seventy-five minutes with no intermission. For tickets, visit the HG webpage at hamiltongibson.org or hgp.booktix.com.