Board of Directors

(Board Officer)

In her 17^th year with HYRT, Art Director Laura Iveson is given free reign over all things props and sets in our indoor and outdoor traveling spectacles and seasonal Recovery Intensives: “Hilltown Youth is all about connection, healing, and radical acceptance. The power of the program is generated by our young people who are constantly building our culture and community. Many of our kids come in wearing their labels and diagnosis and unhealed trauma. In our rural community many are isolated by their struggles or identities, such as trans or disabled. In lantern trainings and recovery intensives they share their struggles with each other. Through the support of their peers and guidance from staff, they are able to move beyond identifying only as their label or diagnosis and become artists, writers, actors, circus artists, and leaders.” Laura is always willing, no matter the size or complexity, to give an outrageous idea a good try. She and her teams have created, among other things, rabbit holes, metal dragons, dragon hoards, turned trapeze rigs into castles, and footbridges into beaver lodges. She loves getting young people engaged in the collaborative process of creating the pieces—large, small, weird, and/or plain—for each production, always with an eye to use found, scavenged, and re-purposed materials. Laura slid into an arts career while living in New Orleans, where she was trained in rigorous Fat Tuesday debauchery, annually creating enough costumes and small floats for her neighborhood during the Mardi Gras season. After her banishment to a colder northern realm of four distinct seasons and stable public schools, Laura turned to community-centered theater and public art projects for her Mardi-Gras fix. In spring 2014, she brought a beloved New Orleans event to Shelburne Falls with the first annual Hilltown Draw-Around. After covering the walls and floor of the town gymnasium with 4,000 square feet of paper she hosted a 12-hour drawing free-for-all attended by hundreds. Laura is an active board member at the Art Garden, a community art making organization, where she has helped raise enough money to fund several programs, including ARTeens, Art-For-A Change and The Art Garden-to-Go. When asked why she remains so committed to the work at HYRT, she answered: “I have a daughter with a disability and Hilltown Youth Recovery Theater is the only program in western MA we found that accepted her completely—and even more importantly—assumed competence in their expectations of her ability to contribute to the group.”