HARDWICK – Peter Gould will lead a storytelling workshop on Saturday, April 1, from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Hardwick Memorial Building.
WonderArts sponsors this storytelling event as Gould shows how he takes personal experiences and makes them into stories that are fun to write, share and hear.
At 6 p.m., the afternoon workshopping closes with a performance, inviting friends and neighbors to sit and listen to stories.
Peter Gould moved to Vermont to join the back-to-the-land generation in the 1970’s, an experience he wrote about in his first novel, “Burnt Toast.” Since then, he has been a writer and a theater worker. His most recent book, “Horse-Drawn Yogurt” tells true life tales about those commune years. For more than 20 years, as half of the duo Gould & Stearns, Gould performed physical comedy and story theater and taught residencies with young students, more than 3,000 times in nearly every state in the USA. He continues this work solo today.
Gould founded the youth Shakespeare program, “Get Thee to the Funnery,” in 1998, and continues to direct the summer camp to this day. He has directed nearly 100 youth theater productions of all kinds in many places, including England and India. In 2002, Peter earned his PhD from Brandeis University and in 2009, he went on to write “Write Naked,” a Young-Adult novel that won the National Green Earth Book Award, a prize given each year to a book that inspires environmental activism in youthful readers. In 2016, Peter was the recipient of the Vermont Arts Council/Governor’s Award for Arts Educator of the Year. Gould lives in Brattleboro with his wife, Vermont State Representative, and visual artist Mollie Burke. They have three children and five grandchildren and are active around Vermont in the areas of climate change, migrant workers’ rights, food and farming, prison reform, restorative justice, cross-cultural communication, and always arts-in-education for young people: especially for families who need support.
The Memorial Building is located at 20 Church Street.