From now until May 13, readers of this paper are invited to visit Judevine, Vermont. It is a fictitious town of just a few hundred "squeezed between sharp rising hills" somewhere in the Northeast Kingdom.

Its residents are common folks, loggers and welders, folks who travel to Stowe to work in the tourist business, farmers, town employees, and a poet named David. They live on the hardscrabble hillsides, in trailers on rutted dirt roads, in rented rooms.

And by the final curtain of Lost Nation Theater's opening production, they live in our hearts, transported there by playwright and poet David Budbill, and by a talented cast of six who play the 24 residents we meet.

While the characters are fictional, there are Judevines all around Vermont, as student Morgan Easton pointed out.

"I knew many of those people," she declared.

Our trip home was spent casting the show using Randolph residents. It was easy to do, and great fun. You meet the large woodsman who moves comfortably inside his own body, the down-on-his-luck man too proud to beg, the single parent slowly going crazy, the hard-cussin' French Canadian who turns profanity into an art form, and the Vietnam veteran who brings his demons home with him.

The show's plot, and it does have one, is suborned to the simple celebration of life in all its textures, colored largely black and white. The show's background, designed by director Kim Bent and painted by Donna Stafford, is from a photograph of the Lost Nation in Braintree, Kim's original home. One lone pine stands on a windswept hillside, not necessarily bravely or defiantly, but because that's where it found itself, and so it grows. The backdrop is black and white.

Budbill's script has that quality. It doesn't glorify, or even necessarily magnify simple human existence. It just lets us take a look. There are no real good guys, or bad guys either, for that matter. Just people, seen by a poet who believes that "no matter who lives, who dies. . . summer, winter, in all, things take their turn."

Every one of the performers deserves kudos for bringing Judevine to life. Mark Roberts was particularly noteworthy, however with his brusque tenderness. Abby Paige, another Vermonter who collaborated on The Voices Project was also memorable, especially as Grace.

But that leaves out Karen Lefkoe of Middlebury, whose portrayal of an old woman quietly in love with her long-time husband was thrilling. Oh gosh, and Scott Renzoni, the poet, who observes with respect, but with the knowledge that he's outside of the experience. Last, not least, and probably loudest, is Ben Ash, who injects every one of his characters with a light spirit.

Kim Bent is to be credited with having crafted a moving tribute to native Vermonters, one that creatively uses sound and movement without drawing attention to itself.

There may indeed come the day when Judevine is mythical, when the rough and colorful folks who have been this state's treasure for so long are truly and completely replaced by second home owners and telecommuters. If so, Vermont will be poorer for it. But as one Judevine resident put it, "We are always here. . . always leaving. . . like the river."

Tickets for "Judevine" may be reserved by calling the box office at 229-0492. Showtimes are Thursdays and Sundays at 7 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. at the Montpelier City Hall.