My Fair Lady, directed by Stephen Stearns with Musical Direction by Alki Steriopoulos

April 15-17, 19-23, 2011

Founder and Artistic Director Stephen Stearns brightens NEYT's spring season with the musical story of Henry Higgins and Eliza Dolittle, adapted from George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion", with lyrics & music by Alan Jay Lerner & Frederick Loewe.   Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party by teaching her impeccable speech.  The bet becomes more than a game as the two spend more and more time together.

Peter Gould on PBS

Full Episode

Watch Peter Gould on PBS. See more from Profile.

Peter Gould VPT Profile

Fran Stoddard visits with Peter Gould of the comedy duo Gould and Stearns. He's also an award-winning playwright and author, and the director of a youth theater in Brattleboro and a Shakespeare camp in Craftsbury.

Fiddler on the Roof Jr.

December 9-19 , 2010

Directed by Stephen Stearns
A tale of family and tradition, set in Tsarist Russia, Fiddler on the Roof, by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, is the story of a family broken apart by many forces. Tevye has three daughters, and he would like to marry them off in a traditional style - a match maker chooses husbands for them, and the girls settle happily and grow into their matches.  The daughters have different plans.  Tzeitel falls in love with Motel the tailor, a nice young man.  But this disrupts her father's intentions to have her married to his good friend, Lazar Wolf, an old, rough, and unappealing option.  Hodel follows in her sister's footsteps and falls in love, without permission, with a traveling student who turns out to be a Bolshevik revolutionary constantly risking exile to Siberia.  Chava, youngest of the marriageable daughters, falls in love with a non-Jew. Can Tevye forgive his daughters for breaking with Tradition?  Will the family ever be together again? Can their roots in their village of Anatevka hold them all together?  Find out this December at the New England Youth Theatre in Brattleboro, VT!

 

VPR Profiles Restorative Justice

http://www.vpr.net/news_detail/89271/play-explores-restorative-justice/

NEYT’s ‘Quality of Mercy’ dramatizes restorative justice

Brattleboro Reformer
Thursday November 11, 2010

BRATTLEBORO -- New England Youth Theater partners with the Brattleboro Community Justice Center to present "The Quality of Mercy," directed by Rebecca Waxman, from Nov. 12-21.
A powerful theatrical collage of work inspired by class work during NEYT’s Season of Restorative Justice, this production will focus on sharing awareness of Restorative Justice with the wider community.
The performance is a multigenerational collaboration of youth and adult students, faculty, as well as alternating groups from within the Brattleboro community. Scenes, monologues, songs and theatrical presentations explore relevant themes of justice, retribution and healing. Material has been pulled from Shakespeare’s "Merchant of Venice," "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding, "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton, and many other great works, classic and contemporary.
Teachers leading classes this semester have trained with the Brattleboro Community Justice Center in elements of restorative justice, including role plays of what actually happens at a restorative justice conference.
This production is a part of International Restorative Justice Week, organized locally by the Brattleboro Community Justice Center. Last year, they held an open mike night at New England Youth Theatre to raise awareness, but this year they have received funding to do a partnership with the theater to create a performance.

The Crucible

October 15-24, 2010

Directed by Peter Gould & Sponsored by Prentiss Smith & Co, Inc.
Arthur Miller's The Crucible performs in Brattleboro.  Directed by Peter Gould, this play resonates in times of intolerance and persecution.  It is a classic of American Theatre - romantic, passionate, and full of political and religious controversy - not only is it good entertainment, but it will leave audiences with something to think about.

Gould directed this play in 2002, at a time of rising intolerance and political polarization--after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as the Patriot Act was renewed, and as the US was preparing to invade Iraq. The tiny stage in the old NEYT lent an atmosphere of cramped, explosive fear, and Gould's own historical research heightened the truthfulness of the young cast's performances. Gould previously played the role of Sarah Good in an intense production directed by John Carroll at the old Brattleboro Center for the Performing Arts, during a year (1976) when federal agents descended on Brattleboro to seek out suspected anti-American domestic terrorists who were presumed hiding on local communal farms.
Come to the show to see why this play is still relevant in today's world, and how it resonates with current audiences.