Edward Little High School – Auburn
Legally Blonde
Orono High School’s fall musical: Legally Blonde, has gone to the dogs! Orono High School is performing Legally Blonde the Musical next weekend and the The cast and crew are partnering with the Bangor Humane Society. A dog up for adoption will be featured at every performance and Bruiser Woods will be played by the adorable Theodore Roosevelt Rosenthal Qualey a Bangor Humane Society alum. All of the money raised from concessions will go to support the awesome work of the Bangor Humane Society. Show dates are November 16, 17 at 7 p.m. and November 18 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Tickets can be reserved by calling 866-1029 or emailing Cami Carter at ccarter@rsu26.org
Alice Down the Rabbit Hole
November 17-19, Friday and Saturday, 7:00 p.m., Sunday, 2:00 p.m. Being performed at The Grand Performing Arts Center, Ellsworth. Directed by Jasmine Ireland.
The Little Mermaid
This enchanting, magical show features talented cast members ranging in grades 3 to 12 from Marshwood Schools.
Tickets are available for $10 in advance and $12 at the door and reservations can be made by calling Marshwood High School at 207-384-4500 or online at marshwoodmusic.org
Make plans now to bring your entire family to see this enchanting, magical show!
George Stevens Academy
November 10, 11, 7:00PM, Anything Goes being performed at The Grand in Ellsworth by George Stevens Academy students.
The Education Team and What We Value
Portland Stage, located in Portland, Maine, offers vital theater arts education to learners ages 4-18 through our In-Theater and In-School programming. All classes and workshops are taught by professionally trained Teaching Artists and focus on literacy, cultural awareness, collaborative play, and creative thinking. Our teaching philosophy highlights process over product, deepening students’ ability to analyze, synthesize, and think critically while making connections to the thoughts and ideas behind the written word. This is one of a series of 6 blog posts outlining who we are and what we do, brought to you by Hannah Cordes, Education Manager, and Julianne Shea, Education Administrator. These posts will appear September 27 through November 1, 2017, on Wednesday’s.
Education Artist in a workshop Photo by Aaron Flacke
As Portland Stage’s education program has grown over the years, so has our educational aesthetic. Thanks to the continuous work over the years by a delightful, curious, joyful, caring, and silly team of educators and administrators, our program has developed into what it is today.
All of our classes are process-based. The work is focused more on having an experience with theater rather than on the final product. Our text work is focused on bringing the text alive. We make time for scavenger hunts and theater games because we believe that these activities build theatrical skills as well as encourage collaboration, creative play, and communication.
Students drive the work that happens in the classroom. We honor and celebrate the ideas they bring to the table. For example, we talk to them about what characters and stories excite them. At the end of a class we ask them what they would like to share in their open studio. In our PLAY in Schools program, we ask students to come up with a simple movement to bring particular words in a poem to life and those become the actions we use to tell the story. In our Directors Lab program, we invite students to take ownership of Shakespeare’s language. We are always searching for ways to increase student investment and creative ownership.
Whenever possible, we work with a co-teaching model. This allows for us to have multiple people in the room cheering for each student and championing their experience! When we co-teach, we increase the likelihood that students will find a way to connect with a teacher and find an entry point into the work. As teachers, we work together and model the collaboration and problem-solving that we ask young people to participate in.
Hannah Cordes in a workshop Photo by Aaron Flacke
We consistently celebrate each other’s work! We devalue competition and focus on fostering ensemble. We invite greater and greater levels of participation in students’ work. We celebrate each seemingly small but monumental acts of bravery that are present in each classroom we enter.
The people you are most likely to see at a Portland Stage workshop are Hannah Cordes, Julianne Shea, and our two education interns. We love reading picture books, playing theater games, exploring texts, and working with young people. We are also lucky enough to have a whole team of over 35 education artists. These education artists have trained at theater companies across the nation, many have B.A.’s or B.F.A.’s in theater, others have Masters Degrees, and others teach at academic institutions. All of the people you find working in Portland Stage’s programs are practicing artists. The work they create both through Portland Stage and with other companies in Maine’s rich artistic community informs their work in the classroom. They personally know the thrill of creating art and the vulnerability it calls for. This practice allows them to excitedly create a supportive environment for students to learn about theater themselves. They understand the risks they are asking students to take because they often take risks in their own creative projects. We also make time to continue to learn new things about theater and about teaching. Notably, Portland Stage’s education team gets together one weekend every year to engage in training. For the last three years we have had Kevin Coleman, the Director of Education at Shakespeare & Company, lead our educators in a teacher training intensive. It is important for all of us to learn new skills and reinforce concepts we value. We also cherish the fact that this training allows for us all to be in the same room at the same time asking questions, getting curious about teaching practice, and sharing stories (both successes and failures).
As our program develops and we collaborate with more and more artists, we continually gather feedback and implement that into our process. We strive to learn and grow. We are grateful for the opportunity to work with so many strong educators.
Interested in learning more about this program? Email education@portlandstage.org or call 207-774-1043 ext. 104.
Messalonskee High School Players
‘Buh buh da do *snap* *snap*’… The MHS Players bring that classic tune from The Addams Family to the stage on Nov. 17, 18, and 19. The dark humor of this dysfunctional family reminds us that love conquers all. Wednesday trades her pigtails for an engagement ring and hilarity ensues when her boyfriend’s Ohioan family meet the dark and sinister members of the Addams clan. Storms, ghostly ancestors, rhymes, the color yellow, and love?! It’s all there for the older fans of the 1960s t.v. show to reminisce over while introducing younger members of the audience to the darkly comedic family. The performance by the Messalonskee High School 
Players is under the guidance of the new director, Shelby Thibodeau, herself an alumnus of Players. In addition, the Players are pleased to welcome as the new musical director, Mike Peterson, a long time music teacher in the district. The actors are currently honing their singing and dancing while the crew hand craft the ghostly costumes of the living and the dead and build the Addams Family mansion on stage at the Messalonskee High School Performing Arts Center. All are welcome on Nov. 17 and 18 at 7:00 pm and on Nov. 19 at 2:00 in the afternoon. Tickets are $5 for students and seniors, and $10 for adults.
In the Heights
In the Heights, the Camden Hills Regional High School fall musical, brings the vibrant community of a New York City barrio, where “Everybody’s got a job, everybody’s got a dream,” to the stage of the Strom Auditorium, this November.
The upbeat Tony Award winning musical production, created by Lin-Manual Miranda of Hamilton fame, will be presented Fridays and Saturdays, Nov. 3, 4, 10 and 11 at 7 p.m.; and Sunday, Nov.5, at 2 p.m.
Advance ticket sales for In the Heights are $12 for reserved (front section) seats and $10/$6 students and senior citizens for general admission. At-the-door prices increase to $15/$12/$8. Tickets can be purchased in advance online at stromtickets.com or reserved by calling 236-7800, ext. 3282. Email stromtickets@gmail.com for ticket orders and more information. The CHRHS Strom Auditorium is located on Route 90 in Rockport.
Through melodic songs, original rap lyrics, humor, and the driving rhythms of hip-hop and Latin music, In the Heights tells the story of a group of friends and neighbors, who share hopes and struggles, find romance, and dream of escape to a better place. Streetwise hipsters, big sound and high-energy choreography are bought to the stage by the singing and dancing ensemble.
On the hottest day of the summer, Usnavi (Eric Glaser) opens his bodega, to find his freezer broken and the milk warm. He invites the audience to his world with the original rap, “In the Heights.”
The sound crew for Camden Hills Regional HS’s fall musical IN THE HEIGHTS includes (L to R) Devon Lammert (junior), Noah Vix (junior), and Elias Porter (freshman). Molly Woodruff (junior) will also be helping the crew with the operation of the 20 wireless microphones used in the show. Photo: Marti Stone
“Now you’re prob’ly thinkin
‘I’m up on sh**s creek
I never been north of 96th street’
Well you must take the A train
Even farther than Harlem
To northern Manhattan and maintain
Get off at 181st and take the escalator
I hope you’re writing this down I’m gonna test you later
I’m getting tested times are tough on this bodega”
While Usnavi raps, he introduces the neighbors who stop by for their morning coffee, lottery tickets, candy, newspapers and, of course, gossip.
That morning, Nina Rosario (Annabel Parker) arrives home for the summer, planning to drop out of college after her first year at an Ivy League school. When neighborhood matriarch Abuela Claudia (Sydney Lytton), greets Nina as the future mayor of ‘Nueva York,’ Nina reveals that her year away from home was a failure.
As the neighbors go about their morning routines, Nina sings about broken dreams, and prepares to give her parents the bad news, in the soaring melodies of “Breathe,”
Hey guys, it’s me!
The biggest disappointment you know
The kid couldn’t hack it, she’s back and she’s walkin’ real slow.
Benny (Matt Nickerson), who dispatches for Nina’s parents’ cab service, takes to his microphone to welcome Nina home in “Benny’s Dispatch.” Vanessa (Isabelle Olson), works at the local hair salon, and dreams of moving out of the Heights, in the driving melody, “It Won’t Be Long Now.”
As the young friends look forward to a party with fireworks, romance and its complications take center stage. Childhood friends, Benny and Nina, fall in love. Nina struggles to see a future after losing her college scholarship, while Benny faces her parents’ disapproval of their relationship.
Meanwhile, Usnavi who hesitates to show his feelings for Vanessa, gets a push from his cousin and employee Sonny (Ruben Feldman) in Vanessa’s direction. The Rosarios struggle with financial problems, and Abuela shares a secret with Usnavi, that could change his life.
A power outage, a winning lottery ticket, and the loss of a beloved friend lead Usnavi, Nina, Vanessa, and Benny to discoveries about each other, themselves, and the place they call home.
In the Heights is presented by CHRHS in special arrangement with R & H Theatricals.
Miranda began work on In the Heights while a sophomore in college. A decade later, it became his first Broadway hit, earning four Tony Awards including Best Musical in 2008. He went on to create the Broadway sensation, Hamilton: An American Musical, which premiered in 2015.
Miranda was born in Washington Heights, in New York City, where immigrants from the Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and Central America made their home. A common theme of immigrants struggling to find a better life, appears in both In The Heights and Hamilton.
A fundraiser for Puerto Rican Hurricane Relief will be held during all five performances. In September, the island of Puerto Rico suffered devastation during Hurricane Maria. Around the same time, CHRHS students were rehearsing the musical number “Blackout,” which closes Act 1, in which the barrio is plunged into darkness, due to a massive power outage. The poignancy of singing the words “blackout” and “we are powerless” while rehearsing In the Heights was not lost on Musical Director Kim Murphy. The local fundraiser was inspired by Miranda’s “Almost Like Praying,” a single he recorded with other Latino artists to assist with disaster relief in Puerto Rico. Like Miranda’s fundraising single, proceeds of the fundraising during the fall musical will be donated to the Hispanic Federation’s disaster relief fund.
Argonautika
Students at Bonny Eagle High School in Standish will perform Argonautika on November 3, 7:00, November 4, 2:00 and 7:00.
Bangor, ME
Penobscot Theatre Company’s Dramatic Academy presents Sideways Stories from Wayside School. The show is Nov. 3 at 5pm, Nov. 4 at 4pm and Nov. 5 at 11am!
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