Northern Stage presents THE DROWSY CHAPERONE Next Week

The Drowsy Chaperone, the five-time Tony-winning valentine to the Jazz Age musical, will be performed by the Northern Stage Summer Musical Theater Intensive students live on stage at the Barrette Center for the Arts in White River Junction, VT, July 25-30. For tickets and information, call 802-296-7000 or visit www.northernstage.org. Tickets are $15 for students and $25 for adults.

Building on last summer's sold out run of School of Rock, the students of the 3rd Annual Summer Musical Theater Intensive program will present The Drowsy Chaperone. Over the course of 4 weeks, local teens train and rehearse with a professional Northern Stage team to execute a fully produced musical. This top-level theater training program is designed to extend the professional rigor of Northern Stage's main stage series to young actors and give them the opportunity to push themselves and their abilities to the next level.

The musical follows a Broadway starlet who is giving up the stage, a pair of jovial gangsters posing as pastry chefs, and a singing and dancing ensemble of maids and butlers. The Drowsy Chaperone is a love letter to musical theater that celebrates what we love about Broadway: infectious show tunes, huge production numbers, and a great story. Northern Stage Assistant Artistic Director and Director of Education Eric Love directs the musical, and says of the piece: "The Drowsy Chaperone is one of my favorite musicals of all time. I first saw this musical at the New London Barn Playhouse in 2011. The colorful characters, hilarious scenes, and toe-tapping production numbers brought me back to the theater three times in a row. Working with this cast of 39 talented young actors from all over the Upper Valley and beyond is a dream come true. They are diving into vaudeville scenes, tap dances, and roller skating with passion and joy."

This production features area youth ages 12-18: James Bryan, Anna Caccavaro, Heike Chaney, Arianna Clark, Charlie Cloud, Virgil Collins-Laine, Emma Cranage, Tessa Cullen, Grace Davis, Artemisia Delgado, Macy DeMara, Esme Downs, Judson Dunne, Cordelia Durand, Rachel Enelow, Ella Falcone, Caroline Hamilton, Avery Judd, Lilly Kendall, Elena Keogh, Bebhinn Knudsen, Clay Kynor, Thea LaCrosse, Emily Masteller, Claudia Mills, Tyler Nabinger, Ian Nolon, Ty Nolon, Camila Pentland, Eva Roux, Alicia Sanyal, Daniel Schaner, Noah Schutzius, Roberto Silva-Neto, Catherine Somoza, Will Stedina, Charlotte Sturm-Gross, Olivia Swayze, Finley Scout Thomas, and Maddy Trimpi.

New this season, Northern Stage launches the Technical Apprentice Program (TAP) in conjunction with the Summer Musical Theater Intensive. This program is designed to train and inspire technical theater artists of the future. Students ages 14-18 train directly with the Northern Stage professional staff in sets, props, scenic artistry, costumes, wardrobe, lighting, sound, and stage management. This summer's TAP students are Kenzie Caulfield, Ari Chisamore, Colin Furch, Ella Lubell, and Maia Reynolds.

The professional creative team, led by Eric Love, includes Trevor Pierce (Music Director), Madeline Apple (Choreographer), James Roeder (Scenic Designer), Alex Taylor (Lighting Designer), Ben Montmagny (Sound Designer) and Valerie Webster (Costume Designer).

Following The Drowsy Chaperone, Northern Stage's educational programming will turn to the fifth season of YES: Youth Ensemble Studio, an eight-month experience for students in grades 7-12. Registration opens for this program July 24, and pricing varies depending on participation level. The YES Company will participate in group nights at the theater with post-show discussions; master classes with cast members and creative teams of the main stage productions, and will rehearse and perform three productions of their own throughout the course of the academic year. YES culminates in a fully produced musical on the main stage at the Barrette Center for the Arts in the spring of 2018. Carol Dunne, Producing Artistic Director for Northern Stage, ultimately oversees all educational programming and helped to create this deeper level of commitment to education starting with her tenure in 2013. "A serious commitment to educating tomorrow's theater artists and theater lovers is one of the core values of Northern Stage. In every aspect of our educational programs, from the Summer Musical Theater Intensive, to Shakespeare in the Schools, to our work with adult continuing education, we set out to inspire our students, expand their horizons, and empower them to take their Northern Stage education and put it to work in their school and community theater programs. We all change lives together!"

Northern Stage offers a year-round schedule of education programs for children and adults. Student Ticketing Programs offer low-cost tickets to every performance for students of all ages, and low-cost matinees for school groups and homeschoolers - serving more than 2,000 students annually. OSHER, Dartmouth's life-long learning institute, is designed for adult-learners, and Northern Stage hosts an OSHER program each year, focusing on a single main stage production, featuring in-depth discussions with Northern Stage staff members and experts in the field or topic of the play.

Northern Stage is a regional non-profit LORT-D professional theater with a mission to change lives, one story at a time. Based at the crossroads of New England -- the Upper Valley of the Connecticut River -- Northern Stage's intimate space sets the stage for actively involving its audiences with ambitious productions and expansive educational programs. Founded in 1997, Northern Stage has offered more than 115 high-quality, professional productions of new works, classics, and musicals. Annual attendance is now over 30,000.