SUmMER PERFORMANCES for KIDS
Summer Performances for KIDS!
Thursday Mornings in July, 10:00am
Location for 2026:
LaValley Family Community Center – 17 Meadow Rd. Newport
Free! All are welcome.
The Summer Performances for Kids are a favorite Arts Center tradition for more than 20 years! Performances are free, fun, engaging and enriching. All ages are welcome. This year, our performances will take place at Newport’s community center, rather than the side lawn, as our lawn is currently re-seeding! Performances may take place indoors or outdoors, depending on weather conditions.
Performance Schedule 2026:
NOTE: No performance on Thurs. July 2nd
July 9th – Miss Julieann in Concert
Join Miss Julieann for a silly and engaging kids concert, featuring a sung reading of her new book, There’s A Dinosaur At My Door. Full of her most popular songs, this interactive and engaging show will get kids singing and dancing. Books will be available for purchase and signing after the show.
Miss Julieann is a music therapist, nature educator, Grammy recognized children’s musician, author and illustrator of the newly published, There’s a Dinosaur at My Door. She has two popular kids music albums, Therapeutic Songs for Kids and Resilient Child. She is known for her work promoting mental health and sustainability through her musical programs.
July 16th – The Baffo Box Show: A Compact Cardboard Comedy with Modern Times Theater
Performed in a one-of-a-kind suit-stage, this show packs classic hand puppetry, Dadaist ventriloquism, and stand-up comedy into a cardboard box and delivers it, with impeccable timing, live on stage. Inside the box are the Baffos — two slapstick chaps who keep the sun, moon and everything else running on schedule. From the moment the lid opens, audiences are captivated as the Baffos juggle and dance their way through the day’s chores, despite the undeniable evidence that their world is changing. A daring work of puppetry and object manipulation, full of beautiful images, junk music sonatas, and Modern Times Theater’s unique brand of all ages comedy. This re-envisioning of classic hand puppet forms is digital entertainment as it was meant to be: two hands, ten fingers, and no camera tricks.
Puppeteered by Justin Lander and directed by Rose Friedman, The Baffo Box Show was supported by a 2022 Family Grant from the Jim Henson Foundation.
Modern Times Theater has been making and touring puppet shows and variety acts, and creating public community events since 2007. They pursue a radically divergent model of art making, creating venues in unlikely locations, and revitalizing the historic, run-down, and defunct. Working in populist theater forms, they seek to reinvent and reimagine classic American entertainment.
Co-founders Rose Friedman and Justin Lander are a husband and wife duo, producers for Vermont Vaudeville, founders of the Civic Standard and alumni of the Bread and Puppet Theater.
July 23rd – Rockin’ Ron the Friendly Pirate presents a Family Concert
Ahoy! Ron Carter, aka Rockin‘ Ron the Friendly Pirate. has performed fun, educational, and inclusive Pirate Music for ALL ages since 2002. Ron‘s interactive songs have boat loads of wordplay and nautical references. Themes include language, history, and values. Ron is also the author of an an illustrated children’s book, The Flying Pirate Circus, based on lyrics from his albums. While his main port o call is Smugglers’ Notch Resort (“America’s Family Resort”) in Vermont, he has appeared throughout Northeastern North America at schools, libraries, and events. Ron is a graduate of Berklee College of Music.
CANCELED – July 30th – The Little Red Wagon Theater Co. presents “Spiders, Stories, and Science!”
PLEASE NOTE: This morning’s Summer Performance for Kids with the Little Red Wagon Theater Company has been CANCELED.
Due to circumstances beyond our control for the performance company of this morning’s show, the show is unfortunately CANCELED. We apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for your understanding!
The summer 2026 Little Red Wagon production is the world premiere of Spiders, Stories, and Science! by Andrew Steven Knight. This new play is the 2025 winner of the Anna Zornio Memorial Children’s Playwriting Award, a national competition sponsored by the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of New Hampshire. Spiders, Stories, and Science! educates and entertains young audiences through the telling of three traditional stories from around the world: The Greek tale of Arachne the weaver, the Cherokee tale of the little water spider, and an Akan tale of the trickster Anansi. Along the way, audiences learn a little bit about the science of arachnids.