Theater

The Theater Program is comprised of both curricular offerings during the school day and a very active HS Theater Company. While classes focus on building skills and exposure to theater practices, the Theater Company produces a wide range of published and original productions, featuring students as actors, playwrights, directors, designers and technicians.

Unique to ARHS is our immersive theater program, started in 2011. Mirroring the surge of immersive productions in the professional world, ARHS students get training and experience each year making wholly original, full-scale immersive productions, taking place in a variety of settings.

Productions

Each year, the Theater program produces:

• A full-length play each fall
• An original, full-scale immersive theater production
• Briefs: an evening of published 10-minute plays
• An annual winter musical, utilizing over 150 students each year
• An entirely student-produced full-length play each spring
• The annual student-written play festival - now over 30 years old
• Guest playwright and artist workshops from professional theater-makers

Accolades

In 2018, the ARHS Theater Company was honored with the Samuel Minot Jones Award for Outstanding Literary Achievement in the greater Amherst community.

In 2012, the Theater Company was recognized in American Theater Magazine for their innovative staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Notable alumni include playwrights Annie Baker '98 (2014 Pulitzer Prize), Madeleine George '92 (Pulitzer Prize finalist), music theater composer Marissa Michelson '00, and actors Libby Woodbridge '06 and Eric Moss-Bachrach '94.

Coursework

Theater classes during the school day are available to both ARMS and ARHS students.

Courses include:

• Drama (MS)
• Acting 1 (HS)
• Acting 2 (HS)
• Stagecraft (HS)
• Theater for a New Audience (HS)
• Social Theater (Summit Academy)