Theater at Bread Loaf

 
The Burgess Meredith Little Theater at Bread Loaf

Virtually since its beginning, the Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont has put a major emphasis upon the theater arts. The Program in Theater provides formal and informal instruction in acting, directing, playwriting, and stagecraft. While the program is not structured as a professional training school, it is oriented toward bringing students into contact with theater professionals in all fields. A major aspect of theater study at the Bread Loaf program in Vermont is the presentation of a major production, a staged reading, and one-act plays directed by students.

In recent years, major productions at Bread Loaf have included Arcadia, Romeo and Juliet, Charles Mee's Big Love, Pirandello's Henry IV and Twelfth Night. The 2009 production was The Changeling, by the Jacobean playwrights Thomas Middleton and William Rowley.

Each year Bread Loaf brings six to eight Equity actors, as well as professional designers and production staff, to the Vermont campus to mount the summer's major production, produced in Bread Loaf's Burgess Meredith Little Theater. Bread Loaf students join the professional actors in performing the production and play all roles in the one-act plays. The major production is directed by a professional

(left to right) Timothy Smith as Sir Toby Belch, James Van Valen as Feste, and Christopher Hutchison as Sir Andrew Aguecheek in the 2008 Bread Loaf production of Twelfth Night.

director and the one-acts are directed by students who have completed the directing workshop. Opportunities also exist for acting students to explore and present longer scenes and for all interested students to act in informal presentations in the directing or playwriting workshops.