The Barr Hill Players Celebrates 10 Years in 2024

The Barr Hill Players (BHP), an ensemble-based theater company based in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2024. The Barr Hill Players annually selects a summer ensemble of emerging actors for its immersive summer fellowship, featuring training in Meisner Technique, Viewpoints, mindfulness, and wilderness skills. In 2024, the program marked a milestone by offering its summer fellowship at no cost. This model will continue for its 2025 fellowship, which is currently accepting applications and will take place on August 6th - 16th.

The 2025 season will also see the continuation of the Fellowship's Capstone Reading, a staged reading of a full-length new work by an emerging playwright. The first Capstone Reading was performed at La MaMa Galleria in New York in 2024, and featured Eva Schegulla's Serene & Determined, a new play about Lavinia Fontana, the first female career artist in Western Europe. Schegulla's work was hand-selected from over 600 submissions for the 2024 Capstone Reading. The 2024 Fellows featured included Emily Augello, Capser Brainard, Charles Etubiebi, Owen Essenger, Ava Grace, Claire Norden, Chloe Olwell, Molly Oubre, James Pygatt, Kate Reilly, Julianna Rezza, and Elizabeth van Wagoner. Additionally, the reading featured excerpts from solo plays written by 2024 artistic residents and Barr Hill alumni: Sarah Tye (BHP '19), Philippe Garcesto (BHP '21), Mia McClain (BHP '21), and Gabriel Szajnert (BHP '22).

On the choice to introduce a Capstone Reading, Katherine Boorstein (BHP Managing Director & Head of Literary) said, "As working performers, the pressure to book the next job often leaves us with too little creative headspace to explore questions about ourselves as actors: Why did I react that way? How could I have stayed more present? The Barr Hill Players fellowship has always aimed to be a space where actors can prioritize 'process' over 'product.' By introducing an ensemble-driven workshop of a new play, we want to give our acting fellows an exploratory, process-driven opportunity to transition the acting tools and creative relationships they find on Barr Hill back to the outer world."

The Barr Hill Players will also continue to support its artists in creating new work beyond the fellowship program 2025. Projects in development include a staged reading The Gardens written by Andrew Giurleo (BHP '17), and a production of Home Country Dress, a solo play adapted by Katherine Boorstein (BHP Managing Director) and starring Yair Koas (BHP '19).