When the team at Middlebury’s Town Hall Theater set out to create a family theater festival, the inaugural event was expected to include two or three shows over the span of a weekend. But the programmers got so enthused about presenting a wide variety of disciplines “that we got a little carried away,” executive and artistic director Lisa Mitchell said.
The New England Family Theatre Festival will present nine shows and two workshops over nine days: Friday, May 8, through Saturday, May 16. Most of the music, magic, puppetry, dance, theater and circus arts events were created for children, but they are “of such a high quality that anyone at any age could come and enjoy it and have a remarkable experience,” said Mitchell, who curated the lineup.
Putney’s Sandglass Theater will open the festival with Feral, a show aimed at teens and adults that employs actors, puppets and shadow puppetry to tell the story of a woman torn between her intuitive knowledge and the societal behaviors she has learned. Members of the Feral creative team will run a free workshop on Saturday, May 9, to teach their shadow puppetry, projection and sound-looping techniques.
On Sunday, May 10, high-energy globe-trotting entertainer Mario the Maker Magician will spin DIY robotics, comedy and audience interaction into what one UK reviewer called “instant and infectious chaos in the best possible way.” Would-be scientists and magicians can explore the magic of light, color and optical illusions at a free preshow pop-up led by Middlebury STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) tutor Carol Buzby.
Other festival headliners include Cirque Us, a New England troupe whose jugglers, acrobats, aerialists and clowns go dumpster diving to create a junkyard adventure called “One Man’s Trash”; and Show Up, Kids!, a New York City company that will stage an interactive comedy in which audience members help create the show.
A family festival complements current Town Hall Theater programs, said Lindsay Pontius, director of the theater’s Center for Learning and Engagement. The theater brings students in to see professional shows, and it launched and continues to support an enterprise that takes the work of William Shakespeare into schools.
When the theater schedules a family event, Mitchell added, “we are packed, so we know that there’s demand for this here.”
Inspired by the Edinburgh International Children’s Festival, Mitchell hopes to grow her event. She has contacted a Dutch circus she saw in Edinburgh about coming next year — “so ’27 is already in the works,” she said.
This year, she is proud to present several local performances, including Little Women by Town Hall Theater’s Young Company; now-hOW-HOWL!, a blend of voice, movement and imagination by composer-vocalist Moira Smiley and dancer-choreographer Laurel Jenkins; and My Sister Heracles, a play written and performed by the high school students of Addison Repertory Theatre, a program of the Patricia A. Hannaford Career Center in Middlebury. The play, which follows a young girl who faces the loss of a beloved family member to a drug overdose, was named one of the top two shows at the 2026 Vermont Drama Festival and selected for last weekend’s New England Theatre Festival.
The Hokum Bros. close out the fest with a vaudeville-style family dance party at the theater’s Maloney Plaza. ➆
This article appears in May 6 • 2026.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
