For Foundations
Performers at the Hilltown Youth Summer Theater Workshop train hard. Beginning each morning with an inspirational group circle, they move through trust-building exercises and a run up the picturesque Western Massachusetts hills, followed by breakout sessions for trapeze flying, aerial silks, dance and swordplay choreography, instrumental rehearsal, voice and character coaching, or set building. By mid-morning, with the July sun high and bright, the 70+ crew of artistic directors, trainers, teen mentors, and campers is sweaty, parched, and in need of refreshment.
The workshop is a 3-week day camp culminating in an outdoor traveling spectacle in which the audience accompanies the cast through an immersive theatrical journey. Charlemont is a rural hilltown at the foot of the Berkshires with pristine farmland in a lush flood plain hugging the curves of the Deerfield River. However, the geographic position of Franklin County off of Interstate-91 has made our community a prime target for drug trafficking along the I-91 corridor, which has been nicknamed the “heroin highway.” In the past ten years, heroin use has grown exponentially in our community and in the past three years the rate of youth prescription drug misuse and abuse has nearly doubled, making substance use in adolescence an important issue to address in order to meet the needs of local families.
In 2015, in response to this statewide epidemic, we launched The Recovery Theatre, a new initiative within the Hilltown Youth Theatre Performing Arts Programs for young people overcoming addiction, anxiety, depression, gender dysphoria and other mental health challenges. The Recovery Theatre is a strength based, holistic model creating change for area youth through theatre and the arts. Recovery Theater teens participate in a 2-week pre-workshop intensive using drama to confront addiction, and then take roles as leaders in the Theater Workshop. At the heart of addiction and craving is traumatic stress, the stuck, and hence repeating, energetic survival states of fight, flight or freeze. For adolescents, especially, substance use is also a risk-taking activity that releases dopamine and endorphins and activates parts of the brain associated with pleasure. Consequently, the field of addiction medicine is paying more attention to the neurobiology of trauma. Harnessing the power of creativity and community, the Recovery Theater helps at-risk teens build self-acceptance and confidence, and boosts natural endorphins with the rush of performing or flying on the trapeze. Wrote the Director of the Opioid Task Force of Franklin County “Your theatre-based intervention offers young people access to networks of safety and unconditional peer love. In a way, your mission prescribes plays over pills.”
Essential to combating substance abuse and depression is maintaining stable dopamine levels through healthy diet and exercise. Processed foods, saturated fats, and refined sugars deplete dopamine levels, while foods high in lean proteins, the amino acid L-tyrosine, and anti-oxidant vitamins C and E can aid in dopamine production. Deep in the heart of the Massachusetts local food movement, farmers in Charlemont and surrounding towns produce berries, apples, pears, abundant varieties of fresh greens, corn, carrots, squashes, watermelon, free range eggs and milk, all high in the nutrients needed to build strong bodies and minds. We envision a spread of this local bounty nourishing our youth before the afternoon’s activity – a full cast reenactment of a battle scene roaring through the hills.
