BLACKSBURG -- As much as self-described Netflix addict Ashley Maynor loves to watch rented movies at home in her pajamas, she says the couch and popcorn experience can't compare with a historic theater like The Lyric.

Watching a story unfold in a darkened room surrounded by strangers and the ghosts of all the people who sat there during the past 75 years "is a powerful experience," said Maynor, the Lyric's new general manager.

And the movies themselves are "the ultimate form of storytelling. ... They can change lives."

Managing the handful of part-time employees and developing new community programming for the Lyric is Maynor's first job in a movie theater.

And her graduate work in film studies at Temple University in Philadelphia is a first for the nonprofit community arts organization, Lyric executive director Susan Mattingly said.

Mattingly said she hopes that experience will help the theater broaden its services and make it even more important to the community.

While the Lyric shows movies most nights of the week and presents top-name musical performances several times a year, it sits empty most days of the week.

One of Maynor's responsibilities will be to create more programs and events to fill that time and space.

As a filmmaker herself, Maynor said she's excited about Mattingly's idea of building a new summer filmmaking camp for middle and high school students.

The Lyric, in partnership with Virginia Tech's Theatre Arts Department, already offers a summer drama camp for elementary school kids.

The filmmaking camp is only in the planning stages. But if it works out, the program would give Blacksburg kids the chance to explore local history, like the legend of the Lyric ghosts and other such stories, Maynor said.

The film camp would also likely draw on Tech's resources.

Maynor's beau, Paul Harrill, just started work in Tech's communications department teaching courses in digital cinema, and may help with the film camp.

Together the couple hopes to boost Blacksburg's film culture in that and other ways, Maynor said.

Maynor, a Tennessee native, has experience with film-related community outreach programs.

She recently worked on a public television project to help residents of Philadelphia's Yorktown neighborhood produce a documentary about that community's history.

And she's working on a documentary about her 65-year-old grandmother who has taken a dozen photographs every day for the past 30 years.

For Maynor, filmmaking doesn't have to be done by professionals to be powerful.

Even home movies have value as a community's own anthropological record, she said.

Maynor said she was drawn to the Lyric because it's as much a community center as a movie theater.

On Tuesday, her second day at work, she was awed by the number of volunteers who sat in the lobby stuffing fundraising envelopes and eating popcorn.

That special kind of loyalty should make other theaters a little jealous, Maynor said.