Miiss Stephanie Erickson is Puck

 Don’t miss A Midsummer Night’s Dream!

                                                   July 25th at 7:00 P.M.

                                                   July 26th at 2:00 P.M.

Founder and Artistic Director: Joanne Vecchio

Joanne Vecchio has been involved in music and performance for much of her life, singing and performing throughout Rhode Island and Massachusetts. She studied classical voice with Blaine Corey, with Rebecca Parris at Interplay Jazz Camp, and has been singing professionally for more than 15 years. She has produced four recordings; her last two, About Love and Where Angels Peep Through are distributed digitally worldwide by more than fifty companies, including Apple iTunes.With a strong interest in teaching, Joanne created a musical story program, reading classic fairy tales and singing songs to elementary school students; she also created and taught a program, “The Music of Poetry,” during a summer program through SCOPE (Schools and Community Organized to Promote Excellence).

Her participation in the Arts Literacy Project, a partnership between Brown University and the Central Falls School District, has given her life goals focus. The Performance Cycle Technique from the Project pairs literature with artistic expression, helping students find the means of telling their own stories.

It is Joanne’s goal to apply the Performance Cycle Technique to all programs at Second Stage Studio. This technique provides teachers, artists, and youth leaders with the tools to engage students in a process of deep understanding by building a classroom community of learners that centers on a text. Students respond to the text and demonstrate this knowledge through high quality performances and artistic presentations.

Instructors: 

Shannon Hagedorn

Felicity Kelly

Director of Yoga Connect, has been teaching yoga for ten years in northern Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts. She is registered with the Yoga Alliance at the 500-hour level and is an educator at the 200-hour level. She is a graduate of the Kripalu School of Yoga and is also an Anusara-Inspired teacher working towards national certification. Felicity has studied with many notable teachers and yoga masters in the United States and offers gratitude for all their teachings. With a strong interest in yoga therapy, she is a member of The International Association of Yoga Therapists. 

Mary McKenna

Mary McKenna taught for 34 years in the Cumberland School System, where she was a classroom teacher for grades K-2. She spent the last six years of her career as an enrichment teacher for grades 3-5. Her current interests include decorative furniture painting and jewelry making. 

Meghan McKenna

Meghan McKenna graduated from UMass Amherst with a BA in theater, focusing on scenic design. Meg has worked extensively with children as an Arts and Science Coordinator at the Adirondack Club children’s camp. She designed sets and taught workshops for the traveling children’s theater group, Imagination on Wheels, in Westford, Massachusetts. Experienced in set design and scenic building, she designed the set for production of School House Rock at Westford Academy, the set for the premiere performance of What Do I Bring To This World?, and is currently designing the set for Anything Goes to be performed at the Lincoln School in Providence. Meghan is the resident set designer/builder at Second Stage Studio. 

William (Bill) McKenna

William (Bill) McKenna earned his BFA and MA in art education from the Rhode Island School of Design. He has taught in the Cumberland School System for 35 years. Since 1983, he has been an instructor in the continuing education program at RISD. In 2002 he received an award for Excellence in Education for Youth Program Instruction at RISD. His work includes illustration, calligraphy, stone carving, and set design. 

Rachael Warren

Rachael Warren has been singing her whole life. A member of Trinity Rep’s resident acting company since 2002, she has starred in shows including My Fair Lady, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Fantasticks, West Side Story, and Peter Pan. Before coming to Rhode Island, she played theaters across the United States in national tours of The Who’s Tommy and Chess and Company. Regionally, she has worked at The American Repertory Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Goodspeed Opera House, Hartford Stage Company, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Cleveland Play House, Virginia Stage Company and many others. She has also workshopped and performed new musicals in Chicago, Boston, New York, and Providence. As a cabaret artist, she has developed three pieces: Stories: 20 Songs, 20 Lives, A Woman’s Work and Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience which played at Trinity Rep in 2003.She received her BFA in Music Theatre from Illinois-Wesleyan University and is a graduate of the American Repertory Theatre’s Institute at Harvard University, where she studied acting. Rachael brings to her 26 years of professional performance experience a lifetime’s love of music and a deep connection to the unique storytelling power of song. 

Steve Kidd

Steve is a graduate of Colby College, has worked at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and received his A.M. in theater from Brown University. He has taught acting at Brown, Wheaton, Colby, University of Richmond and Bowdion College. In addition to playing the title role in The Gamm’s opening production of Don Carlos, Steve has performed in 17 productions at The Gamm over the past five years. He has worked as a teaching artist in the schools of Central Falls and Pawtucket, RI for the past seven years and for the past eleven years he has served as program director and board member for Camp AmeriKids, a non-profit camp for inner-city kids living with AIDS/HIV. He is also a 2008 reciepient of the Lewis Hine Award for dedicated service to children in need.