Education
BTF education programming, which started in 1929 with one of the first summer apprentice training programs in the United States, is part of the lives of thousands of students annually, and though it has experienced many incarnations, it has never faltered in its commitment to educating the emerging artists of each decade.
BTF PLAYS!— a school residency program for 4-6 graders—is part of the curriculum in nine Berkshire county schools. It was designed to give voice to young student's stories through playwriting. Staffed by professional artists-in-residence, the program is priced low enough for public schools to afford and teaches young people how to communicate their thoughts and feelings through playwriting, storytelling, and performance. Each summer, the theatre’s Summer Performance Training Program, which offers scholarships to students who need financial help, works with up to 15 performing arts students between 18-25. The program produces two plays that are seen by more than 10,000 young people throughout July and August. The BTF’s Touring Component, part of the school residency program, also performs for many additional schools and museums throughout western Massachusetts each year.
Read more about this topic: Berkshire Theatre Festival
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“Those who first introduced compulsory education into American life knew exactly why children should go to school and learn to read: to save their souls.... Consistent with this goal, the first book written and printed for children in America was titled Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes in either England, drawn from the Breasts of both Testaments for their Souls’ Nourishment.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“One of the benefits of a college education is, to show the boy its little avail.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)