we are about thirty-five campers aged 12 to 19, from Vermont and a dozen other places. and the coolest staff—here they are:
PETER GOULD is our founder. He has directed more than fifty youth theatre productions. He's also a young adult novelist whose latest novel, WRITE NAKED, published by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, won the 2009 National Green Earth Book Award for its ecological content. Peter directs at the New England Youth Theatre; he's a teacher of theatre for social change at the School for International Training, and Visiting Professor of meditation at Brandeis University. Peter also founded our Chelsea, Vermont, sister camp. He keeps "Get Thee to the Funnery" alive all year long, prepares the script and the concept, and is always ready to explain Shakespeare's metaphors and most outrageous jokes. "I'm not making this up," Peter says. "It's right here in the text!"
SETH SOULSTEIN has worked at the Funnery for eleven years! He and Peter did Spanish, physical comedy, and boxing together at Brandeis University. Seth was co-founder of Late Night Players with Aaron. They toured universities with their own style of irreverent sketch comedy for seven years. Seth is working towards a Masters in Theatre for Social Change at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and is also writing, directing, stage-managing, and acting in a variety of plays while there. Seth is the computer guy who designs our performance program and the intricate scene rehearsal grid that makes those performances possible.
GABRIEL SEPULVEDA is an up and coming theatre director from Santiago, Chile. "Up and coming" means he comes up every summer from way down there to way up here! —to observe and volunteer at the Funnery. He is glad to share his vast experience of Commedia Dell'Arte, Shakespeare in Spanish, Keith-Johnstone-style improvisation, intense character work, Latin American youth theatre styles, capoeira, and Beatles music. Peter and Gabo met in Santiago through their mutual interest in the life and music of the famous Chilean singer-songwriter Víctor Jara.
Gabriel's newest play is the hit of the 2011 Santiago summer theatre season.
Gabriel's newest play is the hit of the 2011 Santiago summer theatre season.
DUCKY hails from Castleton, Vermont. He has worked for five years both at the Governor's Institute on the Arts, and at "Get Thee to the Funnery" camp. As the METAPHOR DUCK, he quacks to alert campers and audience alike to Shakespearean language that needs to be given more than passing notice. In his super-hero disguise, the "DUCK OF DOOM" is the number-one disciplinarian at the Funnery. Ducky unfortunately missed the entire 2008 season after he was inadvertently locked in a suitcase in Brattleboro after Peter's production of Twelfth Night at the New England Youth Theatre.
CLAIRE GREENE, a native northern Vermonter with a film degree from Ithaca College, has returned to Vermont from her Americorps year in Arizona. She currently works at an independent bookstore while pursuing a Masters in Education. Claire is a veteran of the first Craftsbury Funnery EVER, and many more! In addition to returning to the Funnery after a long hiatus to teach in 2009, she assisted Peter for two years in Shakespeare classes at Vermont's flagship high school enrichment program, the Governor's Institute on the Arts.
AARON KAGAN co-founded the Late-Night Players, the acclaimed nationally-touring sketch comedy group, with fellow Funnery staffer Seth. Aaron is a food blogger and columnist for the Boston Globe, a master of movement, official staff chef, teacher of Akkido, textual fact-checker & interpreter, director of large fight scenes, peacemaker, and transmitter of serenity.
KAILIE LARKIN, from Jericho, Vermont, has done Shakespeare with Peter since she was fifteen. She also directs the Chelsea Funnery, our mid-state (younger) sister camp. She has played Claudio, Lady Macbeth, Prospero, and King Lear. A recent intern at Double Edge Theatre, Kailie lives in Northampton, where she is a a poet, a playwright, and a performing member of the Royal Frog Ballet.
ANDREW MARCHEV, Staff Intern, has done numerous productions with Peter, including his masterful channeling of Groucho in the New England Youth Theatre's 2007 production of the Marx Brothers' "A Night at the Opera." Andrew's specialties are improv, salsa (and ballroom) dancing, and conversing easily with people twice his age--or half his age. He and fellow camper Jonathan Flood claimed an immortal chunk of Craftsbury camp history with their bizarre original version of the hitherto-unwitnessed actual death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, inserted into our 2008 production of "Hamlette, Princess of Denmark."
AUDREY KIELY, Staff Intern, has played Helena in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Hamlette in "Hamlette, Princess of Denmark," and the Nurse and Romeo in "Romeo & Juliet," all at Get Thee to the Funnery. She appeared in the Kingdom County film "Shout It Out," and was the 2008 Vermont winner, and national finalist, of Poetry Out Loud. Audrey is an awesome actress, singer, and voice teacher, and currently a sophomore at Wesleyan University.
~We also owe a lot to the folks who have supported us, like the Vermont Community Foundation, Concept 2, the Merchants Bank of Vermont, the Cabot Cheese Cooperative,
The Hardwick Gazette, Craftsbury Academy, Sterling College, and lots of dear and faithful anonymous friends who simply love their Shakespeare.~
The Hardwick Gazette, Craftsbury Academy, Sterling College, and lots of dear and faithful anonymous friends who simply love their Shakespeare.~
