Our Mission Statement

Beyond the Page (BtP) is a cohort of teaching artists using the tools of theater to make education accessible to all. We invite students and teachers to bring their full selves to what they’re learning by establishing personal connections to academic texts and ideas. Through custom-built workshops, we disrupt traditional classroom dynamics by engaging students and faculty in the process of theater-making, using tools such as oral interpretation and physical storytelling to generate new points of access and foster belonging within learning communities.

Rooted in a tradition developed at the Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English over the last 30 years, Beyond the Page visits learning communities across undergraduate and graduate curricula at Middlebury College. We have collaborated in disciplines from Anthropology, Education Studies, Luso-Hispanic Studies, English Literature, French, Political Science, Psychology, Theatre, Film and Media Studies, First Year and Sophomore Seminar, to interdisciplinary courses across departments. 

At its core, theatre brings actors and audience into conversations that hold multiple truths. These conversations ask us to see the world differently and reach outside of our understanding. Theatre is an invitation to connect; to feel; to question; to play; to imagine new possibilities. When BtP brings theatre into academic spaces, we bring a new kind of learning centered on process, experimentation, creativity, and collaboration. We open new lines of intellectual risk-taking and transform what learning and teaching in the liberal arts can be.