{"id":2277607,"date":"2026-02-11T17:29:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T17:29:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2277607"},"modified":"2026-02-11T17:29:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T17:29:26","slug":"a-joyful-tribute-new-england-youth-theatre-celebrates-peter-amidons-legacy-entertainment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/a-joyful-tribute-new-england-youth-theatre-celebrates-peter-amidons-legacy-entertainment\/","title":{"rendered":"A joyful tribute: New England Youth Theatre celebrates Peter Amidon&#8217;s legacy | Entertainment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"article-body\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" false=\"\">\n                                <meta itemprop=\"isAccessibleForFree\" content=\"true\"\/><\/p>\n<p>BRATTLEBORO\u00a0\u2014 New England Youth Theatre&#8217;s Junior Company will perform &#8220;Jack and the Devil&#8217;s Three Golden Hairs,&#8221; a story involving a conniving king who attempts to thwart his daughter&#8217;s prophesied marriage.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Written by NEYT founder Stephen Stearns and beloved Brattleboro folk music icon Peter Amidon, the musical melodrama is described as &#8220;a mishmash of Brothers Grimm and classic vaudevillian stage antics.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Amidon died in October 2025. His grandchild Desmond Bode, 10, of Brattleboro, is the narrator in the play.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m very honored to be able to celebrate Peter\u2019s legacy of joyful music and playmaking at NEYT, and I invite you to do the same by coming to see this incredibly lively and funny piece,\u201d NEYT Artistic Director Ben Stockman said in the announcement. \u201cHe brought a uniquely gentle and creative presence to the theater at a very formative time. We miss him greatly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Showtimes are 7 p.m. Feb. 20 and 21, and 2 p.m. Feb. 21 and 22. Tickets are available from $15 to $20 on <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/neyt.org\/jack-and-the-devil\" target=\"_blank\">neyt.org\/jack-and-the-devil<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>With a brand new staging by director Dory Hamm and music direction by Keira Carmichael-Bowers, the original work is described as &#8220;a prime example of the late Mr. Amidon\u2019s catalogue of new musicals for NEYT in collaboration with Stearns.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Audiences can expect &#8220;funny moments&#8221; in the play, said Desmond, who has performed at NEYT before.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think that the community is nice and the plays are always so much fun,&#8221; Desmond said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Elodie Hughes, 10, of Brattleboro, plays the miller&#8217;s wife, the donkey and the mayor. Each role allows for some fun or humor.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Elodie said the king sends Jack to find the three golden hairs from the devil and encounters &#8220;all these problems.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Vega Valentine, 12, of Guilford, is the devil&#8217;s mom, a villager and the priest.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s really funny and there&#8217;s a lot of jokes,&#8221; Vega said. &#8220;Not all of them are actually funny.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As the devil&#8217;s mom, Vega says, &#8220;Hit the road, Jack.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And that&#8217;s apparently funny because it&#8217;s the name of a song from the 1900s,&#8221; Vega said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Maebel Urban, 10, of Guilford, and another child play guards together in the play. They also act as peasants who are husband and wife. They said the roles bring laughs.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Maebel recommends NEYT to any youth interested in theater.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s a lot of nice people here,&#8221; Maebel said. &#8220;Dory is also a fantastic teacher. He&#8217;s so nice to all of us, and he gives positive input on how we need to change our acting.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The show will feature costume design by Rosa Palmeri, set design by David Regan, lights and sound by Francesca Bourgault, and will be run by a tech, stage management, and costume crew of NEYT students.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.reformer.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BRATTLEBORO\u00a0\u2014 New England Youth Theatre&#8217;s Junior Company will perform &#8220;Jack and the Devil&#8217;s Three Golden Hairs,&#8221; a story involving a conniving king who attempts to thwart his daughter&#8217;s prophesied marriage.\u00a0 Written by NEYT founder Stephen Stearns and beloved Brattleboro folk music icon Peter Amidon, the musical melodrama is described as &#8220;a mishmash of Brothers Grimm [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2277608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[441055,441054,441057,441056,346106,399322,399325,441052,350874,441053,24047],"class_list":["post-2277607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-doran-hamm","tag-dory-hamm","tag-jack-and-the-devil","tag-keira-carmichael-bowers","tag-musical","tag-new-england-youth-theatre","tag-neyt","tag-peter-amidon","tag-play","tag-stephen-stearns","tag-theater"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/A-joyful-tribute-New-England-Youth-Theatre-celebrates-Peter-Amidons.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2277607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2277609,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277607\/revisions\/2277609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2277608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2277607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2277607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2277607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}