"Northern Stage is one of Vermont's finest professional theater companies, and Brooke Ciardelli, its founder and Artistic Director, is one of the state's finest directors." -Times Argus
"One of the most focused, innovative directors in New England." -Rutland Herald
About Northern Stage
Northern Stage is an award-winning, fully professional regional theater company that operates under a LORT-D contract with Actors' Equity Association and also maintains contractual relationships with the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society and United Scenic Artists, Local USA-829 of IATSE. The company produces a seven-show main stage season each year, from October through May, as well as a three-show Family Theater Series. The program also includes a year-round professional theater education program for ages 4 through adult, as well as numerous outreach programs that seek to involve the greater community. Northern Stage is a member of Theater Communications Group.
Northern Stage Mission Statement
Northern Stage is a regional non-profit professional theater that seeks to entertain, challenge and involve its audiences with ambitious productions and expansive educational programs. Based in the Upper Valley of the Connecticut River, Northern Stage brings national and area talent together on an intimate stage in diverse classic, contemporary, and new plays and musicals.
Since its founding in 1997 by Artistic Director Brooke Ciardelli, Northern Stage has offered over 80 productions, including World Premieres such as The Shrew Tamer, Ovid: Tales of Myth & Magic, Take Two and A Christmas Carol: The Musical. American premieres include The Strange Passenger and Damascus, and regional premieres include Wit, Stones In His Pockets and Enigma Variations. Other highlights include a staged reading of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Patrick Stewart and Lisa Harrow and a reading of Resurrection Blues, with the playwright, Pulitzer Prize winner Arthur Miller, in attendance. The company has won the Moss Hart Award for Excellence in Theater for Best Professional Production from the New England Theatre Conference for productions of To Kill A Mockingbird (1999) and Les Misérables (2008).
In 2007, in collaboration with Dartmouth College, the company developed and performed The "O" Myths, based on Ovid's Metamorphoses, which featured Dartmouth College students and professional actors from the U.S., Mexico and Zimbabwe.
Northern Stage's Theater Education Program offers professional theater training for ages 4 and up, including weekly classes, week-long school vacation programs and multi-week summer camps in acting, musical theater, Shakespeare, voice, dance, directing and more. Northern Stage also provides area schools with in-school workshops and residencies and offers school-day matinees of mainstage productions at discounted prices.
Educational outreach programs include Project Playwright, which sends professional playwrights into area schools to help students write and produce their own short plays; Junior Producers, which teaches students all aspects of play production; and Kids-to-Kids Theater Arts (K2K-TA), a peer-based theater education program. Both K2K-TA and the Family Theater Series utilize the talents of the Ensemble, a professional training program for outstanding young artists from Vermont and New Hampshire. The Ensemble meets weekly to learn all aspects of theater, from acting and production skills to marketing, scenic and costume design, stage management and front-of-house. Many ensemble members have gone on to roles at major regional theaters, on Broadway, and in film.
In conjunction with their U.K.-based partners, Developing Artists, the acclaimed Northern Stage production of I Am My Own Wife toured to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the Harare (Zimbabwe) International Festival of the Arts. The company brought the one-man show Tom Crean, Antarctic Explorer to the U.S. for runs at Northern Stage, in Florida and Boston, and for on Off-Broadway run in New York. They also produced a regional tour of a production of Twelfth Night by the U.K.-based Castle Theatre Company from University College, Durham University. Durham University students have also been cast in Northern Stage productions of The History Boys and Hamlet, and the company has hosted guest actors from Zimbabwe.
Community support has enabled us to sell approximately 30,000 tickets to downtown White River Junction activities in the last year. Our patrons enjoy entertaining and thought-provoking professional theater and theater education here at the crossroads of Northern New England. We've also reached out to offer residencies and workshops at over a dozen area schools.
