Enchanted Circle Theater
Founded in 1976, Enchanted Circle Theater, a non-profit, professional educational theater company dedicated to engaging, enhancing and inspiring learning through the arts.
ECT programs, known to expand the boundaries of what is generally presented in schools, integrate theater arts – theater, dance, music, visual and literary arts – with academic and social curricula.
Students participating in a Civil War play.
• ECT professional development programs support teachers in the development of creative curriculum projects, and provide effective techniques for using theater arts as a dynamic teaching tool.
Over the course of the residency, the class researches, writes, and performs an original theater production for the rest of the school and their families. These theater-arts residencies often integrate drama with literature, creative writing, social studies, visual art, music, and sometimes math, science, and history into one cohesive unit.
In exploring a theatrical approach to a given topic, students and teachers learn that creativity can be utilized at any time, with any subject matter, to make any experience fuller and more enjoyable.
These workshops give teachers the experience and the confidence needed to integrate theater-arts into their future classes and help them encourage the creative initiative in their students.
Theater Arts Residencies:
• encourages cooperative learning and problem solving;
• creates an exciting learning experience for teachers and students;
• helps foster a sense of pride and accomplishment;
• teaches an entrepreneurial sense of learning- how to research, interpret, create and perform material;
• encourages self expression and reading aloud with feeling, understanding and presence;
• encourages teachers to integrate theater and visual arts in their classroom;
• inspires learning!
DYS Program options:
• Steam, Slavery & Secession: A Dramatic Look at the Civil War
• Living Geography: Lessons from the Ancient Worlds of Egypt, Greece & Rome
• The Art of Life Science:10 Inspired Theatrical Presentations
• Weather or Not!: A Science Discovery Museum with Creative Brainstorms
• Kids at Work: Child Labor in the Industrial Revolution
• False Face Society: Legends of the Iroquois Nation
• Math Matters: Math in our Daily Lives
• Trail to Freedom: The Story of the Underground Railroad
ECT’s productions and workshops have earned national acclaim.
• The company was in residence at the Smithsonian Institution’s Discovery Theater and was voted "outstanding family theater" at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina.
• The company has performed at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center and the Jewish Museum in NYC, the Olney Theater in Maryland, the New York State Museum and Education Center in Albany, the Amaturo Theater in Miami, and has performed at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library in Boston for over a decade.
• In 2004, Priscilla Kane Hellweg, Executive/Artistic Director of ECT, was named Outstanding Artist-in-Residence in Massachusetts, by the Massachusetts Alliance for Arts Education.
• ECT has been honored with the Non-Profit Excellence Award from the Holyoke Chamber of Commerce, and was chosen for inclusion in the Catalogue for Philanthropy, a magazine listing "80 of the most worthy organizations in Massachusetts" for charitable giving. ''