At a Middlebury Tech Center, Theater Students Learn More Than Just Stage Skills

At the Patricia A. Hannaford Career Center in Middlebury, local high school students learn how to fix engines, grow plants and build tiny houses.

But on a Tuesday morning in March, the 14 teens in Eric Reid-St. John’s classroom were putting the finishing touches on an altogether different kind of creation: an original play they would perform for the wider community. The production, I’ll Tell You a Secret, is set in the 1970s, at a high school party in an abandoned house. But the topics it addresses — peer pressure, alienation and betrayal among them — are timeless.

The juniors and seniors involved in the project had spent months building the set, composing music, and crafting characters, dialogue, and scenes. The show would open in two days.

First, though, there were some last-minute matters to attend to. Students circled up and listened intently as Reid-St. John, whom students call Eric, gave them notes.

Slow your delivery, he directed one young actor. “I like the tender moments,” the teacher said. “But the tender moments need to be heard.”

Another student asked if he should actually sip from a can of seltzer — a stand-in for beer — during the performance.

“If you’re supposed to be drinking on stage, drink on stage,” Reid-St. John told him.

After a bit more back-and-forth, students rose from their chairs and headed to the black box theater at the back of the classroom. The house lights went down, and the cast and crew launched into one of their final run-throughs.

For most young people with a passion for performing, theater is for after school or weekends. But Addison County teens can hone their drama skills during the school day for academic credit. For 30 years, Hannaford Career Center — one of four tech centers in the state that operates as a stand-alone school district — has been home to the Addison Repertory Theater program, or A.R.T., alongside more typical technical education classes such as automotive technology, advanced manufacturing and culinary arts.

The program provides a unique opportunity for students to participate in the performing arts in a hands-on, intensive way, with peers who share their creative interests.

A.R.T. isn’t the type of class where you “just sit on a computer or learn about what mitochondria are,” Middlebury Union High School senior Gabe Schmitt said. “We actually do stuff here.”

Students — who hail primarily from Middlebury Union, Vergennes Union High School and Mount Abraham Union High School in Bristol — can enroll in a morning performance class focused on writing and acting or choose an afternoon technical class, where they learn about costuming, lighting, sound and scenic design. Each class meets for two-hour blocks, five days a week, for the full school year. Students enroll for a year or two and earn credits in English, fine arts and electives.

Programming at career and tech centers is often influenced by industries prevalent in the region in which they operate, said Nicole MacTavish, superintendent of the Patricia A. Hannaford Regional Technical School District. That’s the case for A.R.T.

Middlebury, home to Town Hall Theater and Middlebury College, boasts a thriving theater scene and community members who value the arts, MacTavish said, so it made sense for A.R.T. to be housed at the town’s tech center.

Locals flock there to see the student performances, MacTavish said. “Our community really appreciates it.”

So do the students.

Nel Stein, a Middlebury Union senior, compared A.R.T. to a job—in the most positive way. Before joining, she said, her motivation to succeed was driven mostly by grades. But in A.R.T., it comes from wanting to create quality productions.

Those include four live performances a year, including a children’s show staged at local elementary schools; a British-style comedy; a series of 10-minute one-act plays; and either a student-written original play or a classic or modern full-length work.

The camaraderie that forms among classmates working together on a stage-worthy production distinguishes A.R.T. from other school experiences, Middlebury Union junior Candace Bloom said.

“It feels way more like an actual community than a class,” Bloom said.

A.R.T. alumni have gone on to successful careers in the performing arts — usually after studying the craft in college or at an arts conservatory. Jake Lacy, who starred in the first season of “The White Lotus,” and Quincy Dunn-Baker, who recently appeared in the movie No Hard Feelings with Jennifer Lawrence, are products of A.R.T.

Current students say their teacher is a big reason why the program succeeds. Reid-St. John moved to Addison County from Alabama six and a half years ago, taking over from a director who had held the position for more than 20 years. A stage actor, Reid-St. John had taught theater at a large high school outside Birmingham.

Andrew Morris, 23, attended A.R.T. during the 2018-19 school year, the first in which Reid-St. John served as director. He’d dabbled in music composition before attending the program, Morris said, and Reid-St. John encouraged him to write a score for the class production of its contemporary choice, Almost, Maine. Morris said Reid-St. John was a “great collaborator,” who gave thoughtful feedback and encouragement as he crafted the music.

Morris now works outside Los Angeles as a podcast producer, audio engineer, and freelance film composer and editor and gets together with Reid-St. John whenever he returns home to Vermont.

“He’s one of the most influential people in my life,” Morris said. “Every 16-, 17-, 18-year-old needs an Eric.”

Vergennes senior MaryBeth Cosgrove said Reid-St. John is “good at pushing you out of your comfort zone but not making you uncomfortable.”

One of the goals of career and technical education is to prepare young people for jobs. For some tech programs — welding or construction, for example — the trajectory is relatively straightforward. For A.R.T. students, though, the path from school to workplace isn’t always as clear. Still, the program’s advocates say the skills students learn — including teamwork, effective communication and project management — can serve them in many different careers.

“Some people call them ‘soft skills,'” said Dana Yeaton, an associate professor of theatre at Middlebury College who helped get A.R.T. off the ground in the 1990s. “I call them survival skills … The training they get is so cross-disciplinary.”

Dawn Wagner, owner of Daily Chocolate in Vergennes, was in the first A.R.T. class in 1995. “We were a motley crew,” Wagner recalled of the inaugural cohort. “There were artsy kids, a football player … It was a very Breakfast Club situation.”

After graduating, Wagner attended the University of Vermont, then moved to New York City and worked as the stage manager for the LAByrinth Theater Company, a nonprofit started by the late actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, and in production for Radio City Music Hall’s Christmas Spectacular.

Wagner had wanted to be a stage manager since middle school, she said, and A.R.T. sharpened her technical theater skills and gave her “an artistic home.” At UVM, where she majored in theater, Wagner recalled a professor saying he didn’t need to teach her much because she came with such solid skills.

Joe Isenberg, who grew up dyslexic, remembered school as a mostly disappointing experience until he found a creative outlet in A.R.T.

Raised in Cornwall, Isenberg attended A.R.T. from 2000 to 2002, then went to the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, a competitive theater arts conservatory. He later embarked on a career as a fight choreographer — teaching actors how to use their bodies and weapons to create the illusion of violence onstage. Isenberg was the first resident fight director of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. He currently works as a fight choreographer for New York City’s Metropolitan Opera.

“I would not be where I am today without A.R.T.,” Isenberg said. “Everything they set in place created a chain reaction that led me to where I am.”

Despite the program’s transformative power, many are worried about its future amid ongoing education-reform efforts at the state level and widespread concern over the future of public education and the arts under the Trump administration.

The effort to make the state’s education system more efficient and centralized could place programs such as A.R.T. on the chopping block, said MacTavish, Hannaford’s superintendent.

“We’re in a world where you have to justify things economically,” said Yeaton, the Middlebury College professor. But some of what A.R.T. cultivates — connection, engagement, community — is not easily quantifiable.

Those by-products were on display, though, when students presented I’ll Tell You a Secret to a packed house of friends, family and locals on a Friday night last month. Costumed in ’70s-era jumpsuits, letterman jackets and Chuck Taylors, the troupe put on a show that was equal parts funny, poignant and creepy. The crowd reacted with laughter, gasps and a standing ovation during the final bow.

The actors stood in the hallway after, greeting audience members as they filtered out.

“That was intense,” one person remarked.

“Really fun, guys,” another said.

Praise like that can count as much as a perfect mark on a test.

It’s confirmation, said Cosgrove, one of the student actors, that “you made an impact on another human being.”

This article appears in Apr 23-29, 2025.

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