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, and Pirandello's Henry IV. The 2008 production will be Twelfth Night.
Elizabeth Bunch as Juliet in the Bread Loaf production of Romeo and Juliet |
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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 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. |
The professional actors make up the Bread Loaf Acting Ensemble. Drawn from around the country, and often from Trinity Repertory Theatre in Rhode Island, the actors not only perform on stage but bring their talents to classes on campus. They help faculty and students investigate texts of all kinds—dramatic and poetic, as well as fiction, non-fiction, and original student writing.