All that Glisters is not Gold

July 16 and 17, 2011

In the bold physical style of Gould and Stearns, NEYT’s Junior Summer Shakespeare Program presents “All that Glisters is not Gold”, a workshop version of scenes from William Shakespeare’s immortal “Merchant of Venice.”

In 2011, for the first time, both of NEYT’s Shakespeare summer companies will be tackling the same play.  “Glisters” provides a great opportunity for the Jr. Company to dive very deeply into some of  these  complex characters, with all their ironies and frailties.  Scenes have been selected to highlight the strengths of the actors involved, and to showcase some of Shakespeare’s greatest writing.

“All that Glisters is not Gold”, directed by Stephen Stearns, Peter Gould, and NEYT newcomer Jonathan Flood, gives us Portia, one of Shakespeare’s most powerful female characters, a whole crew of male roles coming to grips with the full range of loving emotions, a clown with a midlife crisis, a wayward daughter, and the complex money-lender Shylock, who, after four hundred years of literary life, still resists narrow interpretation.

Come and enjoy a performance under the NEYT tent.

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.