Blog: New at CMTM

The Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine and the Raising Readers program at Maine Health announce the installation of the “Little Beaver and Echo” exhibit at the Museum & Theatre’s location on Thompson’s Point. The illustrated pages are mounted along the indoor route that families take to enter the Maine Watershed Aquarium; there visitors can also see a beaver specimen from the Museum & Theatre’s collection on display and learn about its habitat and lifeways.

Last week the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) moved Cumberland County and the entire State of Maine to the designation of "medium" community level for COVID-19. As a result of these changing conditions, I wanted to share with you the Museum & Theatre’s updated masking policy. As an institution that listens to content experts and follows science, we have​ been committed to mirroring CDC guidance as it pertains to our decisions around the spread of COVID 19, including masking.

As the first in the Visiting Artist Series at the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine, Pamela Moulton will facilitate two projects. The first is an immersive sculptural installation that visitors will create using projects that use repurposed fishing rope and nets. The rope and nets are sourced through cleanup efforts done by the Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation. The second project invites visitors to repurpose found objects to create an enchanting underwater forest environment.

A wildly dizzying whirl of juggling, magic & movement, puppetry, circus & socks…totally tangled together! Meet Janoah Bailin: a pajama-clad unicyclist who sways on stage, with a suitcase in tow. As he unpacks, he introduces the audience to a whimsical world of clothes-pin towers and erratic toothbrushes. SpinS is a one person circus show that weaves circus, dance and puppetry into entertaining and mind-bending performances for all ages.

The Visiting Artist Series in the Lunder Arts and Culture Gallery is designed to enrich the Museum & Theatre’s arts education programming for children and their families with a focus on using art as a lens to explore sustainability and our changing planet. From February 19, 2022 to May 28, 2022, the Visiting Artist Series will host three artists, all of whom call Maine home and will work with Museum & Theatre visitors to create communal works of art.

From thousands of pounds of salt to large quantities of krill, sand lance, and silversides, taking care of the more than a dozen species in our Mountains to the Sea exhibit requires a lot of specialized supplies. Without the salt, we could not create the perfect saltwater environment for our horseshoe crabs and lumpfish. Without food-like crickets and earthworms, for example-we would not be able to feed our turtles and frogs. For these aquatic supplies and many others, the Museum & Theatre is grateful for T-Mobile’s generous contribution to our Animal Care Sponsorship. This sponsorship supports the food and materials required to care for our special aquatic friends.

Maddy’s Theatre premieres the first musical staged in our new space at Thompson’s Point on December 3-30, 2021. Musical theatre has been an important staple in the almost-100-year history of the Children’s Theatre of Maine, and the timing of Frederick feels especially significant. Frederick is a musical, directed by Hollie Pryor, that adapts the children’s book by Leo Lionni. As the days get colder and the nights get longer, Frederick offers a story about hope, resiliency, and camaraderie to inspire audiences of all ages throughout another Maine winter.