GUILFORD — For a second summer, Guilford Free Library and Guilford Center Stage are again collaborating on Stage & Stream, a weeklong theater and library camp this August 14-18. The session will be open to children in grades 5-8, and will be free to Guilford kids. Those from other towns may attend for a fee of $50 for the week.
The camp day will run Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., at a pair of adjacent 1890s venues in the village of Guilford Center.
Mornings will take place at Guilford Center Stage in the Broad Brook Grange, with theater workshops, games, improv, and sketches. Each day begins with breakfast snacks and an intro to the day's activities.
Campers and teachers then take the 2-minute walk to the Library for brown-bag lunch and an afternoon of literature, writing, journaling, and outdoor time in the woods, stream, the new play-space, and Weeks Trail. Healthy snacks will be provided throughout the session.
Returning from last year are theater teachers Rachel Durante of Guilford and Maia Gilmour of Brattleboro.
Durante is a theater graduate of Goucher College and has been featured in Vermont Theatre Co. productions this season. Gilmour studies Humanistic Psychology at Point Park University, and plans to continue her education and to enter the fields of art therapy and art education.
Library staff and parent volunteers will also be part of the team. On one or more afternoons, guest practitioners will join the group for indoor and outdoor activities.
Guilford Center Stage was founded in 2015 by Broad Brook Grange. The group has premiered plays by Guilford playwright Michael Nethercott and performed comedies by Vermont authors Dorothy Canfield Fisher and Charles W. Henry.
It is preparing for its fifth production, the premiere of one-act plays by Jean Stewart McLean (1917-1963) in October.
The town's library is regularly open several days a week, and will be staffed on camp days. Guilford Free Library has a history of providing activities for the children of Guilford, including story time and other workshops for older children and programs for adults.
For a number of summers, it has provided two morning-session Library Camps - the summer reading program - free to Guilford children. These camps, for younger children, will continue this summer.
For the Stage & Stream camp, transportation will be arranged for any camper who requires it in order to attend.