Elizabeth Sutton-Stone, Artistic Director and Co-founder of YOUNG HATS!

“Shakespeare is perfect for kids. I’ve never believed it was beyond a kid to connect with Shakespeare. It’s legible and memorable by design. The plots are sensational. The poetry is beautiful. And the people are so real! It’s a common misconception that the language is very different from ours. It isn’t. You just have to learn a few rules. And pretty soon you move from translating it to reading it, hearing it, feeling it.

I think kids reach an age — some time before high school — when they have an imaginative growth spurt. They start thinking metaphorically and morally. And they can have such exciting, free ideas about Shakespeare. Not in spite of their age, but because of it! It’s the beginner’s mind.”

Liz graduated from Yale University in 2010, with a B.A. in English. She has trained in acting and directing at RADA in London and at the New School in New York City. She has devised acting Shakespeare programs for students in her home town of Panama City, Florida, as well as here in Brooklyn.  She has been a teaching artist and coordinator for White Bird Productions’ Creative Theatrics program since 2015, and she has been a private tutor in Brooklyn since 2013. Directing credits include Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, King John, Measure for Measure, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Euripides’ Hippolytus. In 2013, she assistant directed The Revisionist by Jesse Eisenberg at the Cherry Lane Theater. 

Caity Richards, Choreographer and Co-founder of YOUNG HATS!

Caity graduated from Yale University, with a B.A. in American Studies.  She has nearly 20 years of experience as a dancer and vocalist, though her first love was musical theater. In college, Caity was one of the first students to participate in Yale’s Dance program, with Emily Coates, and she performed with the Liz Learman Dance Exchange. She has also studied at the Bates Dance Festival with Bebe Miller, Kathleen Hermsdorf and Chris Aiken. Most recently, she is working on extended vocal technique with Perter Sciscoli and Meredith Monk. She has taught dance, yoga, voice, and musical theater to adults and kids, both independently and with the Freelance Players in Boston and Brooklyn Children's Theatre right here in BK. 

Caity is interested in exploring expressive range, particularly the interplay between body and voice. In her work with Old Hat, she uses an eclectic mix of techniques -- drawing on dance improvisation, Western vocal technique, and contemplative traditions, among others -- with the intention of making relevant, complex meaning available in the staging of classic texts.