Mission Statement
Founded in 1976, Enchanted Circle Theater (ECT) is a non-profit, multi-service, educational theater company which engages, enhances, and inspires learning through the arts. We are a theater company, a teaching institution, and a community-based arts organization.
Enchanted Circle serves an essential need in education by bringing the “joy back into learning.” We offer creative education programs that integrate theater arts - theater, dance, music, visual, media and literary arts – with academic and social curricula to improve academic achievement and support social and emotional health. Our programs motivate youth to want to learn, support them in believing that they can succeed, and help them develop the 21st century skills of innovation and creative thinking necessary for their success in the future.
We work in schools, professional theaters, community centers and human service agencies, with people of all ages and abilities.
WHAT WE DO:
Our school residency programs help youth become active, engaged, and resourceful learners by making classroom curriculum relevant and compelling.
Our 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, on a daily basis, across core curricular boundaries.
Our site-based and touring productions spark new interests and broaden understanding of the world around us through original history plays, cultural productions, and curricular plays on science and literature.
Our community collaborations embrace and build community through creative education programs on topics of social relevance.
Honors and Accomplishments:
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.
In addition to thousands of schools and museums along the East Coast, 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 2011, we received the Arts/Learning "Outstanding Arts Collaborative in Theatre Award." 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 "the most worthy organizations in Massachusetts” for charitable giving.