By RUSS OLIVO

WOONSOCKET — Maybe you’ve seen him up on a ladder, the tall, lanky fellow changing the letters on the Stadium Theatre’s old marquee, or picking up cigarette butts from the sidewalk below.  Or maybe you were just one of the countless people he cornered with an impromptu lecture on the virtues of community theatre.

A volunteer board member with the Stadium Theatre Foundation for over a decade, Roger Petit has long been an insider in the organization that has fast become one of the city’s leading cultural institutions.
But if the ruling body of the non-profit organization has its way, Petit, 74, may soon be on the outside looking in.
Petit says he has been notified that the Stadium Theatre’s board of directors wants to remove him from the panel under the just cause provisions of the organization’s bylaws.
Petit told The Call he was informed by letter that the board will decide the matter at a hearing on Aug. 19. He said he intends to bring a lawyer and a stenographer in order to protect his interests at the hearing.
“I don’t feel I’ve done anything wrong,” says Petit. “I’ve never said a negative word about the foundation for any purpose.”
Except for some off-the-record comments from board members who are still talking to him, Petit says he has received no official notification of the substance of the charges against him. Those members have told him the higher-ups in the organization want to get rid of him for making statements to the media instead of allowing the Stadium to handle promotions and press inquiries through authorized channels.
The board warned him to stop talking to the press in September 2007, Petit says.
Christopher J. Bouley, the president of the Stadium Theatre Foundation, did not dispute Petit’s version of events, but he indicated that the improper contacts with the press weren’t the only issue the foundation had been having with Petit.
“There are others things,” said Bouley, but he declined to elaborate, saying the situation was a personnel matter that the organization prefers to handle internally.
“The board members of the Stadium Theatre take their responsibility as an economic engine for the city and the region very seriously,” Bouley said, however. “This is a dying breed of organization and we want to make sure we continue to thrive.”
Bouley said a 25-member, all-volunteer board runs the Stadium Theatre. Members are generally chosen because of some expertise they have in running a business, from bookkeeping to marketing. Bouley himself is a vice president and investment advisor for Merrill Lynch.
A retired meat-cutter for the now-defunct Almac’s chain of supermarkets, Petit has been involved with the Stadium virtually since its inception some 13 years ago, when the resurrection of the shuttered 1926 theatre was just a glint in the eye of then-Mayor Francis L. Lanctot. Petit was one of a core group of volunteers Lanctot rounded up to start cleaning up the theater, which has since undergone a multi-million-dollar restoration.
The Stadium, an anchor of the northern stretch of Main Street, is now about to enter its eighth full season of world-class presentations in the performing arts. It has about half-a-dozen full-time staff members, and is widely considered to be an important catalyst for economic activity in the area, particularly the restaurant business.
Petit says he has been committed to the success of the Stadium since the beginning. He says he never misses a chance to promote the Stadium, especially the role of local community players like those with the Encore Repertory Company, who call the Stadium home.
“I’m one of those people who value the effort of those coming up on stage,” he says. “I could never get enough publicity for the productions being put on by local people. I had the time and I had the voice to do it.”
By his own admission, however, Petit hasn’t always gone through channels to steer members of the media to official press liaisons for the Stadium. In apparent violation of the 2007 edict to avoid the media, Petit says he invited a reporter on a tour of the Stadium without permission as recently as early July.