Wheaton Squier grew up singing and acting in the hills and hollows of Vermont.

Wheaton’s been involved with Theater In the Woods since he was very young, as an audience member, actor and director over the years.

Involved with dozens of plays in Rutland and Bennington county since he was 10, Wheaton is always excited to share that experience with the young thespians and artists at camp.

He’s been part of the Vermont singing scene for many years with Village Harmony, Northern Harmony, the Spoon Mountain Singers (among others), and he brings that musicality to camp.

Wheaton wears many hats in the community: he spends his non-theater time farming, firefighting, and coaching high school Ultimate frisbee and rock climbing teams. He loves bringing all of these different experiences and talents to camp and adding them to the collaboration and community of making theater.

 He is so glad to be a part of this wonderful troupe and to continue the legacy of Theater In The Woods.

Megan Bouchard is passionate about using theater as a tool for personal growth and social change. Her commitment to the artistic process, fueled by her curiosity for the transformative power of storytelling, makes her a vital member of the TITW team.

Theater is in Meg’s bones. She spent her early childhood in the rehearsal rooms, costume departments and audience of Capital Repertory Theater in Albany where her father was the artistic director; she started acting professionally in film and television at age eleven in Los Angeles. She then studied acting with Seth Barrish and Lee Brock at The Barrow Group, Fred Kareman on Meisner technique, and Shakespeare & Company’s first conservatory in Lenox, Mass. From acting, she shifted her focus to find her calling in directing theater. She was mentored by Reg Flowers of Falconworks Theater Company in Brooklyn, NY. She soon became the Educational Director of that company, responsible for producing six seasons of Falconworks’ Off The Hook theater festival for young playwrights. Using techniques from Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed, Meg empowered young people to write original one-act plays, which were then produced by professional theater makers and community members.

Meg was introduced to Theater in the Woods when she met Melissa and Wheaton while visiting her parents in Vermont. She volunteered the first summer of camp in 2016, and in 2017 moved her family to Vermont to commit to Theater in the Woods full time. She is the lead director of the plays created at camp, and directs community theater productions for the Theater in the Woods Company, including Our Town, Dancing at Lughnasa, and The Pavillion, as well as the Ten-Minute Plays fundraiser each fall.

As a life-long student of theater for growth and change, Meg attended SITI Theater Company’s virtual Suzuki and Viewpoint intensive in the winter of 2021 and a Psychology Drama residency in the summer of 2023.

Meg is thrilled to be a part of the Theater in the Woods community, and to be sharing a space for art and creation with her son Rocco.

Rainbow grew up with Theater in the Woods. From acting in plays from TITW’s early days at SolarFest to the founding of camp in 2016, to her deep embodiment of Emily in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, Rainbow’s talents and skills have become an essential creative element of the organization.

Rainbow has always seen the world through a creative lens; immersion in an imaginative and generative space like Theater in the Woods is where she thrives.

Before TITW, Rainbow’s life took her on many adventures before she nestled her roots back into Vermont where she was born and raised. She has run her own horticultural business for nearly a decade, remodeled the milking parlor of her father’s old dairy barn to live in, launched an art business, and most recently, started a flower farm and a band.

Rainbow is inspired by the idea that “we get to co-create our experience of being alive” and is dedicated to this as her most important creative act, both personally and collaboratively with the surrounding community she is so grateful to be a part of.

Melissa Chesnut-Tangerman has worked with hundreds of children in performance arts: as music teacher at Long Trail School 2002-2013, director of homeschool and after-school choruses in Middletown Springs and Tinmouth, music director for musicals at Long Trail School, Rutland Youth Theater, Rutland HS and Mill River UHS; for many years as the choral elective teacher at Green Mountain Suzuki Institute in Rochester (VT); and as the alto in the quartet Ah! Cappella for the Vermont Symphony Orchestra’s Music-in-the-Schools program.

Melissa directed the first four years of SolarFest Theater in the Woods plays.

She is proud to have been a mentee of choral arranger and conductor Robert De Cormier, founder of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra Chorus and Counterpoint, Vermont’s professional vocal ensemble. Among many other accomplishments, Robert was music director to Harry Belafonte and Peter, Paul and Mary, and of the New York Choral Society. A charter member of Counterpoint, Melissa sang, toured and recorded with the group from 2000-2015, traveling weekly 167 miles round trip to Barre or Montpelier for rehearsals, happy to do that for the privilege of making exceptional music with some of the most accomplished musicians in the state, and for the car rides with Robert and Louise. 

​Melissa has extensive administrative experience: as co-executive director of SolarFest and later President of its board for many years, as SolarFest’s volunteer coordinator for 15 of its 20 years; as President of the board of Counterpoint for two years; as Chair of the Long Trail School’s Arts department for several years. She created and executed a curriculum for Long Trail’s middle school students that incorporated teamwork, self-knowledge and connection to the woods, culminating in overnight stays at her home woods.

​Her passion is to help young people build true connection to the natural world and to know themselves in it. Oh! and Music!

Hakan was with us in 2018 and 2019 and 2023, and we are super excited that he will be back with us this year. A teacher of art at the Long Trail School and now Burr and Burton Academy, he brings his amazing artistic ability in many mediums, his easy laugh, his perpetual sense of wonder and play. 

Live Lane is over the MOON to be returning to Theatre in the Woods camp, and to Vermont! Live has been a part of the magic in the woods since 2016 (and many years before that at Solarfest as a one-time actor and many-time audience member) and it is the highlight of their summer each year they are able to be a counselor! Live spent a lot of time doing theater in high school and has been making art in many fashions since they were a wee one. They most recently worked on a vegetable production farm in Delaware. With a love for all things nature, and a whimsical current flowing through their heart, they are so ecstatic to return to the woods to play and create and sing this summer!

Malindi Chesnut-Tangerman

(Wolves camp)   Malindi is teacher and Emotional and Social Learning specialist at Hilltop Montessori School in Brattleboro. She holds a Florida State Teaching Certificate and brings her educational experience as an ESL and subject teacher for six years in Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan. She is well versed in theater and music and our camp, with acting and stage managing experience at SolarFest, Long Trail School, Hamilton College, and was the stage manager for our production of Dancing at Lughnasa. ​Malindi is the long-time instigator of Theater in the Woods minstrelry.

Emma Luikart

This will be Emma’s fifth year with us as a counselor. They bring a widening wealth of experience from theatrical productions at UVM back to their stomping grounds. They are our very able, imaginative, competent and kind assistant for Bears, Bobcats, and Wolves – and the designer and executor of our silkscreen t-shirts!

Emma Weatherhogg

(Wolves camp)   Emma delightfully brings her playfulness, contagious smile, and kindness into the world. She is ready to step into a life that is in full alignment with her heart. Emma was called in to help with Theater in the Woods during the pandemic and has not stopped since! She has years of experience interacting with children as a sports coach, yoga teacher, paraeducator in the school system, babysitter, etc. She is eager to get wild and let loose, spend quality time in the woods, and surround herself in conscious community.   

We are fortunate to have several recent campers join us as junior counselors and counselors-in-training.