Spellbound is AATE's 2017 Outstanding New Children's Theater Company

This coming weekend, at the annual conference for the American Alliance of Theater and Education, Spellbound will be awarded with the 2017 Winifred Ward Zeta Phi Eta Outstanding New Children's Theater Company Award. 

We will be celebrating this award through the end of July and into August by sharing some love from thinkers and makers in the field about what makes "baby theater" and Spellbound's work so important. This campaign will be across our social media platforms and I encourage you to share/like these posts as they come up to boost their reach to our community. Make sure you're following Spellbound on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram.

Here is a preview of the speech that Spellbound's Outreach Coordinator, Emily Baldwin, will be presenting on behalf of the artists, board, and staff of Spellbound:

Babies are amazing.

We learn more, grow more, and discover more about ourselves and our world in the first five years than we do at any other point in our lives.

Very young children are more open than we are as adults, more perceptive than we are, more creative, and they do not sit still out of politeness or convention. They demand our full presence, our full creativity, our full selves. They deserve artwork that honors their ingenuity, and a space for art that is designed with their needs and incredible abilities in mind.

It is an honor to create work for this most discerning and sophisticated of audiences. We celebrate the babies, toddlers, and preschoolers who have inspired Spellbound’s first five years of performance and educational programs. We have learned, grown, and discovered by following their lead and looking at the world around us with fresh and inquisitive eyes.

Thank you to the babies for showing us a world full of possibilities and wonder. Thank you to our artists, staff, and board for constantly raising the bar of quality for this underserved audience.

Thank you to the AATE award selection committee for recognizing the importance of this audience and honoring us with this award.

Thank you.