Our 2018 summer spectacle is going to be at Berkshire East!!
“Yip, yip!” The Beast will be home to a real beast this August when when the Hilltown Youth Theatre Summer Workshop bring Appa, Momo to life in their performances of Avatar the Last Airbender, our first full mountain outdoor, traveling spectacle!
Save the dates July 16- August 8th!
The Hilltown Youth Theatre Summer Workshop is the flagship of our youth programming. The Workshop provides much needed, high quality, intensive arts experiences for young people in one of Massachusetts’ most rural areas. For the past seven years, through artistic excellence, exemplary work with young people and a commitment to building a supportive community for youth, the Workshop has helped young people develop personally and artistically through professional caliber, community-centered theater. The program brings together student-performers from all over the region to train and collaborate on theatrical productions at a high level. It is part of an effort to use theater to create a larger sense of community that transcends buildings and school campuses and instills in young people a sense of place and appreciation of hilltown life and passion for the arts.
In 2017, 70 performers (ages 5 to 19), 11 dancers, 8 musicians, 20 guest artists and 4 techies, representing 19 different towns, 13 schools, 3 states and 2 countries, along with 700 plus theatergoers enjoyed this unique, innovative and inclusive workshop. Performances take place outdoors on the bucolic two-acre campus of the Hawlemont School in Charlemont Massachusetts where the audience and actors journey together from scene to scene. The Hilltown Youth Theatre Summer Workshop has become a hub of creative activity in our community performing plays from Shakespeare to Tolkien and hosting resident artists from Ashfield’s world renowned Double Edge Theatre to Northampton’s award winning Serious Play! Ensemble to Smith College Theater and Afro-Am professor Andrea Hairston’s Chrysalis Theatre. Last summer’s Workshop featured a Shakespearean, outdoor traveling spectacle, Shakespeare In Like, an original adaptation of the Bard’s work conceived, designed and directed by our creative student team, with an assist from our cultural partners, Amy and Ty Lemerande of Knight Horse. (knighthorse.org—“our mission is to make Shakespeare cool again!”)
Part of our job is to make the Hilltown Youth Theatre Summer Workshop a dynamic and exciting space for visiting artists to spend time and exchange voices with our talented students and faculty. Recent guest artists include: Joe Delude, best known for his Tony award winning makeup designs for the broadway hit musical “Wicked” and the remake of Ghost Busters, and NYU acting instructor and Innovative Theatre Award (ITA) winning mask designer director and performer Joe Osheroff (recent credits include the U.S. national tour of War Horse). The summer wouldn’t be complete without making our annual sojourn to internationally renowned Double Edge Theatre’s indoor, outdoor traveling spectacle and a post-performance talk back with the company.
