In fair Verona we know too well the desperate tragedy that befalls “two households both alike in dignity” — ah, yes, good ol’ “Romeo and Juliet.” But what does that play look like when you transport it to the classroom of fourth- and fifth-graders?

Well, last month, Courageous Stage director Lindsay Pontius and creative director Craig Maravich began their “Romeo and Juliet” residency in the fifth-grade classrooms at Mary Hogan Elementary School in Middlebury. The duo have been collaborating with the teachers and students, and are gearing up to present Shakespeare’s classic “Romeo and Juliet” on the Town Hall Theater stage on Dec. 5.

What have they discovered?

“The students know the themes of honor, loss, mistrust, nobility,” said Pontius, who launched the Shakespeare It’s Elementary program over a decade ago. “There’s real equity in this work… Everybody can participate and everyone can succeed.”

From an academic perspective, the program “delivers a shot of adrenaline to English Language Arts curriculum,” reads the description on the Courageous Stage website, courageousstage.org/shakespeare. “There is a role for every child that will push the limits of their own literacy, creativity and collaboration. Students are introduced to vocabulary, storytelling, design, movement, history and character development.”

MARY HOGAN FIFTH-grader Matilda Boyce rehearses a scene from “Romeo and Juliet” in class last week. The students are preparing for the culminating event of the Courageous
Stage residency program — a live performance on the Town Hall Theater stage, Dec. 5.
Independent photo/Steve James

“There is a lot of power in this language,” added Pontius, who was a founding member of Shakespeare & Company’s nationally award-winning Fall Festival of Shakespeare that involves thousands of students (grades 7-12) in Massachusetts and New York every year. “The reason I keep coming back to Shakespeare is its big, juicy, expensive words.”

“There is something about Shakespeare that speaks to people,” chimed in Maravich, who is also the founding program director of Beyond the Page — a program that uses the practices of theater and performance to develop curricula for classrooms, professional development for faculty, and community engagement in student learning spaces across Middlebury College.

“We might think of Shakespeare as something old and crusty,” said Erin Jones-Poppe, operations and marketing manager for Town Hall Theater, and also the parent of Mary Hogan fifth-grader Sebastian Poppe. “The class [through Courageous Stage] is being taught in a really interactive way that energizes students, and gets them to do things they wouldn’t normally do.”

“There is a way in which Shakespeare taps into the complexities of what it means to be human,” Maravich continued. “To step into those moments with visceral, beautiful language… really asks an actor to live out loud. For fourth- and fifth-graders there’s a freedom and an innate understanding of profound human themes: What is it to take revenge, to be loyal to your friends, to find ecstatic joy, to feel real grief, disappointment  and rage, to be mistreated… to see the cruelty and beauty of the world. Without getting intellectual about it, they know all of these things…. They experience them at home, at school, and on the playground.”

ISAAC RIVERA IS up for a fight as Brady Simpson and Steele Roark watch during rehearsals at Mary
Hogan Elementary School last week.
Independent photo/Steve James

Fifth-grade teacher Jan Collins asked her students what they like about Shakespeare and reported “so many positives.”

“I think our Shakespeare play is fun because we can prepare to do something big.”

—Max Swenton

“I love putting on plays and acting. I love Shakespeare’s plays. Putting on plays at school is especially fun because theater turns into an almost everyday thing.” 

—Tilly Ribaudo

Highlights for Ribaudo include “acting in our groups doing the theater and movement activities. Learning the lines and acting it out is really fun. Having the Courageous Stage theater group come to our classroom to work with us is great. It was really fun writing the song to accompany our act.”

Oh, yeah! Did we mention that Bridport’s Clint Bierman is part of this whole program too? He came to the classrooms to help students compose original songs to accompany the scenes. Listen here:

It’s nothing short of magical what happens in this roughly eight-week course. 

“I see youth discover these senses of themselves step into these great moments of courage or risk that is really meaningful to them,” said Maravich, who resides in Bristol and is, himself, the father of two young kids. “Courageous Stage is small but mighty. Talking as a parent more than anything, I would love if Courageous Stage had a really strong footprint in Addison County or Vermont or rural New England.”

That’s the idea.

LINDSAY PONTIUS GIVES Mary Hogan student Mason Wesley tips on swordsmanship during rehearsals last week.
Independent photo/Steve James

Pontius and Maravich are working hard to develop programming through Courageous Stage that is geared toward students in the classroom, as well as professional development for teachers through digital platforms.

In 2025, Courageous Stage plans to launch a 25-day professional development program for educators that is served in bit-sized, 20-minute digital modules. This is a fully accredited, asynchronous course designed to equip teachers with strategies for supportive community building and the daily challenges of a classroom.

“I love teachers,” said Pontius, who also wears the hat of Education Director at the Town Hal Theater. “I have such great respect for their profession.”

What Pontius hopes to do with the professional development programming is refocus educators on the reasons why they chose to become teachers.

“What was their dream to begin with?” She asked. “How do you keep that passion alive? The ‘who you are’ is key, and unfortunately, there’s often more emphasis on the ‘what you do’ part of the job.”

MASON WESLEY, AS Romeo, battles with Zara Trump, as Tybalt.
Independent photo/Steve James

“There’s not often the space for teachers to be taken care of, to be nourished, to go back to the reason they chose this vocation,” echoed Maravich, who has found that is something folks are hungry for in the “Reimagining the Classroom” course he teaches at Broad Loaf Teacher Network in the summers.

Maravich and Pontius agree with Shakespeare, it’s not about “…a story of more woe, Than this of Juliet and her Romeo”; it’s all about “how to keep your heart and courage.”