The Rimers of Eldritch
By Lanford Wilson

Open dress rehearsal: Wednesday, February 3 at 4:00 p.m.

Performances: February 4-6 at 7:00 p.m in Franklin Theater

The audience will be seated on the stage for the performance. The play contains difficult subject matter, which includes sexuality and violence.

One cast member reflects on her process as an actor in The Rimers of Eldritch.

EMILY TALPEY ’17 writes:

My experience in rehearsals for The Rimers of Eldritch thus far has been an interesting one to say the least. I play the role of Eva Jackson, a fourteen year old girl who is crippled and falling in love with her best friend, Robert (played by Henry Wasserman). Part of the show follows the relationship between Eva and Robert. In addition to some of her other challenges, my character, Eva is sexually assaulted.

Looking back to my first rehearsal makes me realize how far I have come with my comfort in risk taking. Only a few months ago Henry and I started to explore our characters in an independent rehearsal. I remember the tentativeness between us in that rehearsal, not altogether sure how the other was feeling or thinking.

Now at rehearsals I sometimes catch myself on stage and I feel as if the two of us actually are Robert and Eva. It usually happens when we make eye contact during a scene, or when we make a choice that we’ve never tried before.

Something I have appreciated about this show in particular are the genuine friendships I have developed with people both in character and out of character. Often times the connections I make with people in character still translate when we’re out of character. I think this is because the trust, support, and love in the cast exists in both places.

In spite of this though, I felt a weight on my shoulders for several weeks because we had done every scene in the show except the sexual assault. I was anxious that we were not underway yet, but we finally did begin right before winter break. The first time we marked through the scene, I felt nervous but ready.

One of the things I did not expect about the assault scene is the amount of physical strength it would require from me. Just this past week rehearsal left me sore!!! The victim in a fight scene always does more work than the attacker. This insures the well-being of both people, but especially the victim.

I feel safe doing the assault scene. I do not feel like I am in danger. In fact, I feel that I have control in the scene.

The assault takes full investment from both me and my scene partner. If one of us were to stop trusting the other we simply could not do the scene. It takes a while to build up trust with someone because as trust builds, your guard begins fall down which leaves you vulnerable. Trust requires this though. Trust requires vulnerability.

If you stop to think about it, Waynflete is all about trust and vulnerability. All you have to do is walk down a hallway and you will see the familiar “W safe place” sign, but I have never truly experienced the potential of the W safe place until Rimers of Eldritch. For most of my time at Waynflete I think I have hid behind the W safe place sign. The W safe place sometimes can feel like a shelter from the outside world, but this only happens when you are hiding behind the sign. The real point of the space is to be able to take risks.

Rimers has given me a much greater appreciation for Waynflete, my director, my fight coordinator, Andrew Silver, my peers, and my cast mates… I truly cannot imagine any other high school tackling a production like this.

Helen Gray-Bauer ’15 came by for a visit to discover that she is a local celebrity.

As the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD’s) Civil Rights Project Director since 1990, Mary has litigated on discrimination issues, free speech and religious liberty, and relationship and parental rights. In 2015 she successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in the historic case Obergefell v. Hodges, establishing the freedom to marry for same-sex couples nationwide.

With Vermont co-counsel, Mary won 1999’s Baker v. State ruling leading to the nation’s first civil union law.  She was lead counsel in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health (2003), which made Massachusetts the first state where same-sex couples could marry, co-counseled in Kerrigan v. Connecticut DPH, and served on the 2009 and 2012 Maine ballot campaign executive committees.

Mary led GLAD’s challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act, Gill and Pedersen, leading to the first federal District and Appeals Court victories against DOMA, and coordinated amici briefs for Windsor at the Supreme Court.  As a member of the legal team in the Michigan marriage case DeBoer v. Snyder, she became the Supreme Court oralist on behalf of the plaintiffs in Obergefell.

Mary holds a law degree from Northeastern University School of Law, is the Shikes Fellow in Civil Liberties and Civil Rights and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, a 2014 MacArthur Fellow, and is currently on an advisory board for the American Constitution Society.

Mary graduated from Hamilton College and Northeastern University School of Law. She lives in Portland with her spouse and their two children.

On Thursday October 1st, after a day of classes and right before a soccer game, Steve Kautz and I sat across from Jan Robinson, the owner of EcoHome. Her visit came about as a part of the independent study I am doing with Steve on Socially Responsible Investing (description at the end).  EcoHome is “a design resource that believes in sustainability related to home decor” (“EcoHome”).  The conversation began, and slowly I became horrified by the cushion I was sitting on and the fabrics that stretched across it. Jan explained that her business budded from her Asthma, which is triggered by the abundance of chemicals in everyday furniture. Her awareness led to research which shocked her, just the way it shocked me.  

Flame retardants such as Penta, Octa, and Deca otherwise known as PBDE’s “build up rapidly in breast milk and human blood…”, can lead to higher risk of cancer, disrupt hormones, cause development problems, neurological problems, and are a “potential carcinogen”. These PBDE’s were outlawed in 2003, but are still abundant in foam products, recycled carpet padding, and old furniture (“Researchers and Firefighters Say Flame”). We took a stride in the right direction, but again still, created a damaging flame retardant known as Chlorinated tris, or TDCCP which is still in use, and is a “probable carcinogen” and causes “neurological damage” (“Researchers and Firefighters Say Flame”). After researching some of the chemicals ridden in everyday clothing, furniture, etc. it’s hard not to be worried about it. After thoroughly discussing these chemicals and where they reside, Jan noted that there is a direct connection between the oil company and the chemical company.

As an advocate for sustainability, I am quite often disgusted by oil companies and their practices; but that day I realized that it transcends far beyond the gas that goes into your car based on $45.19/barrell oil (Oct. 22). Exxon, on it’s website states; “We are one of the largest petrochemical companies worldwide. Our chemical company provides the building blocks for a wide range of products, from packaging materials and plastic bottles to automobile bumpers, synthetic rubber, solvents and countless consumer goods.” (“Chemical”).

However, there are some budding companies, such as EcoHome in Portland, ME, that have a main goal of avoiding these chemicals, among many other things, such as products imported from China or irresponsibly harvested wood. Jan’s idea responsibility goes beyond the ordinary environmental sustainability, and extends towards supporting local economies. She buys products from local businesses and sells them in her store.

The market today may seem overpowered by companies such as Exxon and Apple, whose practices lean on the irresponsible side, and whose shadow seems to stretch over the economy, politics, and government. But there are people out there with big dreams to change the minds of consumers, such as Jan Robinson.

Interested? Check out EcoHome from 10am-5pm Tues-Fri, or 10am-7pm on Saturday. It is located on 334 Forest Ave Portland, Maine 04101. Or at www.ecohomestudio.com

My independent study, Socially Responsible Investing (SRI), is an opportunity to explore how our society is supporting (or not) through our dollars business models that could benefit society.  SRI takes on many forms and is not limited to environmental/sustainability concerns.  Some companies are considered socially responsible based on their human resource practices or employee satisfaction.  In this course we have looked at investing in general, SRI through mutual funds, classical economic ideas ranging from Karl Marx to Adam Smith, the origins of SRI, and SRI criteria, and local examples of SRI or sustainable business practices.

Citations

“EcoHome.” http://www.ecohomestudio.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Oct. 2015.

<http://www.ecohomestudio.com>.

“Researchers and Firefighters Say Flame Retardants Linked to Serious Health Risks and don’t work as expected” scott.net. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Oct. 2015      

<http://www.sott.net/article/296690-Researchers-and-firefighters-say-flame-retardants-linked-to-serious-health-risks-and-dont-work-as-expected>.

“Chemical.” ExxonMobile. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Oct. 2015.                    

<http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/company/worldwide-operations/business-divisions/chemical>.

To help us explore the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement he lead, Waynflete’s racial awareness group, RAaW, has invited Arlie Schardt – a longtime journalist and public interest advocate and the grandfather of Josh (’17) and Tobias (’23) Lodish – to speak at the Upper School assembly on Thursday, January 14.

Mr. Schardt began his journalistic career editing his grade school, high school, and college newspapers.  After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, he played in the 1956 U.S. Olympic water polo trials, and then landed his dream job—on the staff of Sports Illustrated magazine.  But after hearing several speeches by the Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Jr., he obtained a transfer to TIME magazine, where he spent nearly seven years covering the historic Southern civil rights movement.

Mr. Schardt then joined the legislative staff of the American Civil Liberties Union, where he co-directed a national campaign to impeach President Richard Nixon, one year before the Watergate scandal.  His book, “Amnesty: The Unsettled Question of Vietnam,” was a key factor in President Jimmy Carter’s decision to pardon thousands of Vietnam War draft resisters.

Mr. Schardt went on to serve for seven years as Executive Director of the Environmental Defense Fund, which won a long, long battle to ban the pesticide DDT—thereby preventing the extinction on the Maine Coast and elsewhere of such iconic species as the eagle and the osprey.  He was then chosen as National Press Secretary for Al Gore’s 1988 presidential campaign.

In 1995, Mr. Schardt founded his own national environmental organization, Environmental Media Services (EMS), which generated a huge increase in media coverage of energy, environmental. and health issues. EMS was the first to launch campaigns on today’s most important problem—climate change—some 20 years ago.  Although now retired, Mr. Schardt still serves as chair of Friends of the Earth, one of the most activist front-line groups on issues from climate change to reversing the collapse of bee colonies and related threats to our food supply.

At the assembly on Thursday, Mr. Schardt will be followed by local high school student Salim Salim  who will deliver his recently recorded TEDxDirigo talk on his experience as a person of color in America. The write ups on each speaker from the TEDxDirigo website is below:

“Salim Salim has direct experience with risky and dangerous situations. Born and raised in the city of Mosul, Iraq. Salim’s family was forced to escape due to increasingly risky security issues in 2008. After leaving Iraq, Salim and his family lived in Turkey as refugees via the UN. He came to the United States in 2010, on the verge of adolescence. Landing in a totally foreign place and not speaking the language, Salim faced a new set of challenges. Instead of shying away from them, Salim took risks to jump head-first into his new life in Maine.  Salim is currently a senior at Deering High School in Portland, Maine, and serves as the school’s Student Body President. Throughout his high school career, the Seeds of Peace camp has given him a multitude of opportunities and changed his entire life for the better. Salim, who speaks five languages, credits organizations like Seeds of Peace, The Telling Room, and TEDxDirigo for helping him maximize his potential as an immigrant living in America.”

I stood in Eden. The warm Bahamian sun browned my shoulders. The turquoise waves lapped at my toes buried in the pink sand. Shorebirds flitted around me. I stepped backwards and within seconds the ocean pooled into my footprints.

Yet, something was terribly wrong with this paradise. As I receded to the high tide line, the turquoise water that gathered in my footprints was made bluer by the fragments of plastic film swirling in the crashing waves. The pink sand that filled my footprints was made redder from fragments of rope, brittle and broken, mixed into the confection of sand. My footprints were filled with infinitudes of tiny pieces of plastic. Bait nets choked the coconuts, lost shoe soles marked their own graves, a rubber toy squid lay lifeless. Instead of Eden, I realized I was standing in a garbage patch.

I first learned about marine litter when I was thirteen. I was given an inscribed copy of the book Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam and the Science of Ocean Motion by Loree Griffin Burns. Then when I attended Waynflete, my upper school classes in Marine Biology and Environmental Science opened my eyes to the interconnectedness of all fields of study. Through these I developed a passion for environmental stewardship.  When I learned about the Cape Eleuthera Island School’s nine-week gap year program, with its mission of sustainability, I knew it was the right start to my gap year.

At the Island School, electricity came from wind and solar power, the water source was rain, and food was grown through aquaponics or raised locally. Luxuries like long showers and napkins were not allowed. I realized that these comforts come at great cost to our earth and to our future. There, living simply, I picked guavas from trees, and I dove into an underwater world. I watched a schoolmaster snapper dart in out of its reef shelter avoiding barracudas patrolling the water column above. I saw the true workings of a natural ecosystem and I learned this abundance of life is a privilege that needs to be respected and protected. Even in this paradisal landscape, I saw that when the balance of the natural ecosystem is ignored, life fails, as evidenced by the invasive Australian Casuarina trees collapsed on their sides, roots sprawling, near the beach. I saw the impact that living in “comfort” can have on nature and learned the key to longevity of a species is the ability to live indefinitely within the natural limits of an ecosystem.            ­­­

I spent my days focused on field research, trawling the surface of the Caribbean Sea for plastics. In the lab, I dug my hands into the stomachs of fish, sorting and analyzing the plastics found in them. I discovered there were nearly four million pieces of plastic per square kilometer in the Exuma Sound, and thirty percent of pelagic fish had visible plastics in their stomachs. These plastics harbor toxins that accumulate in their tissues. When humans eat the fish, these toxins can cause cancer, cardiovascular problems and reproductive disorders. They damage our nervous systems, disrupt our immune systems, and trigger allergies and hypersensitivities. In addition, a toxin used in plastic bags interferes with hormone systems. The issue was no longer just about plastics pollution and marine animals; it became an immediate health issue, especially for my Bahamian neighbors who depend on sustenance fishing.

I woke to the reality that living healthily and sustainably is not just a matter of effort but involves making decisions with complex social implications. The results of our first-world comforts of disposable plastics are ending up in the Bahamians’ food supply. In addition, the issue of whether their main food source is poisoning them is secondary to the fact that—poisoned or not—the sea is being overfished. Many Eleutherans do not have the means to fish and harvest sustainably, however. If a fisherman can catch a juvenile conch illegally, he has dinner for his family. If he decides not to harvest that conch, there is potential for more in the future, but his family will go hungry that day. It is a fragile and uncomfortable balance between living in the present and planning for the future. When we make policy, we have to find the balance between environmental sustainability and economic sustainability for affected people.

Although I saw an ocean of problems, I know a ripple of good can have a powerful effect. I returned home to Maine with a mission to eliminate Styrofoam and plastic bags in Brunswick. In an effort to raise awareness and to educate the public, I began writing letters to newspaper editors in which I highlighted the equally hazardous environmental effects of both paper and plastic bags, as well as the health risks involved with plastic. I joined “Bring Your Own Bag Midcoast,” a local grassroots environmental advocacy group whose mission is to promote reusable bags and containers. At a recent Brunswick Town Council meeting, our group proposed an ordinance to ban Styrofoam. After I reported the results of the research I did in the Bahamas regarding Styrofoam, the members of the Town Council unanimously voted to begin the process of banning Styrofoam. Of course, with publicity come detractors. I have had to rebut press written in opposition to my efforts. But I was also contacted by the Natural Resources Council of Maine, which offered to fund our mission—further evidence that ripples spread.

I stepped away from comfort this year, from my familiar lifestyle and the expected path from high school into college. I learned to consider outside myself, to live sustainably for the future, to look globally but also to know that action at the local level can bring about real change. You can help by signing a petition for a Styrofoam ban and nickel fee on single use bags in Brunswick and Topsham, Maine by going to bringyourownbag.info.

The Upper School will honor the spirit of Dr. King by exploring his legacy and that of the civil rights movement he led in a variety of ways during the second semester.

Waynflete’s Diversity and Equity Faculty Committee has invited students to add their voices to the chorus of Americans supporting social justice and racial equality in our nation by entering themselves for consideration of the second annual Spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. Award.  The Award is an opportunity for students to engage in dialogue that looks for ways to end oppression, to affirm basic civil rights, and to call for increased opportunity for all people by submitting an essay in response to the following prompt:

Here is a link to the full application form.

The Spirit Award will kick off a series of events this semester designed to help students to understand what it means to live in America today as we seek, in the words of Dr. King, to “live out the true meaning of (our) creed.”  During the week before the MLK holiday, Waynflete’s racial awareness group (RAaW) will sponsor an assembly and an advising lunch discussion celebrating the work of Dr. King and the civil rights movement he led.  A week later, Mary Bonauto will speak at assembly about her lifetime of work as a civil right advocate.  Last spring, Ms. Bonauto, an attorney, argued successfully before the United States Supreme Court that state bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional, a decision that is widely regarded as one of the most significant in the modern era of the Supreme Court.

In March, Waynflete and Maine Seeds of Peace are hosting the first New England Youth Identity Summit (NEYIS).  The Summit will attract students and educators from schools across New England and beyond for a conference designed to spark meaningful conversations about identity, diversity, and community.  The events kicks off on Friday evening, March 11, at the Portland Public Library with a poetry, music, and theater performance by the NYC-based Dialogue Arts Project (DAP). DAP creates experiences that help individuals collaborate and communicate across lines of social identity.  Waynflete will host Saturday’s program, which features speakers, music and spoken-word performances, student-led workshops, and breakout sessions for both students and educators.  More information about NEYIS will follow soon.

We are also working out details for two other assembly speakers: Margo Walsh and Don Sawyer.  Margo is a Waynflete alum, class of 1982.  After a successful career with Goldman Sachs, Ms. Walsh started MaineWorks, which is an “innovative staffing company with a compassionate and community-rooted mission to support the thriving industrial construction industry in Maine while positively affecting the lives of our employees.”  A “temporary labor staffing company,” its employees “are reentering the workforce and face real barriers to employment.”

Dr. Sawyer is an African American sociology professor at Quinnipiac University who teaches classes, among others, on the sociology of race and hip hop music.  He has visited Waynflete twice before, and he Skyped in this fall to the Upper School Faculty Retreat.  In addition to speaking at Waynflete, Dr. Sawyer will be the keynote speaker at the Identity Summit as well as lead a workshop or two.

Shuhao Liu is a new sophomore at Waynflete. He came from China through a program working with students who want to attend school in a different country.  He intends to graduate from Waynflete in 2018.

USNOW staffers Kiera Macwhinnie and Chase Warner sat down with Shuhao recently  for an interview to find out more about him and his impressions of Waynflete and America.  The interview is linked below.

The students below are among a select group of musicians chosen by audition to participate in the prestigious All-State Music Festival at the University of Maine at Orono on May 19, 20, and 21, 2016.  See the links below for more details about the Orchestra and the Mixed Chorus.

All-State Orchestra

• James Bigbee – Oboe
• Sara Wasdahl – Violin

All-State Mixed Chorus

• Scout Heath
• Leah Israel
• Dorrie Pinchbeck
• Genevieve Welch

Join students and educators from schools across New England for a conference designed to spark meaningful conversations about identity, diversity, and community.

NEYIS kicks off on Friday evening at the Portland Public Library with a poetry, music, and theater performance by NYC-based Dialogue Arts Project. DAP creates experiences that help individuals collaborate and communicate across lines of social identity.

Waynflete will host Saturday’s program which features speakers, music and spoken-word performances, student-led workshops, and breakout sessions for both students and educators.

More information will follow soon. We look forward to seeing you at NEYIS!

Questions? Email .

During the week of exams (Monday, December 14 – Friday, December 18), students are only required to be in school during their exam periods.  They may be on campus when they do not have exams if they choose.  Please make plans with your child regarding your expectations for where s/he should be when not taking an exam.  If your child will be absent from an exam, please follow the usual procedure for reporting an absence.

Below is the exam schedule for next weel.  For make-up exams or exam conflicts, students should contact Peter Hamblin at or at extension 1230.

Please note: Weather could alter the exam schedule so that rescheduled exams could run as late as 3:00 on Friday, the 18th.  Please do not plan to travel before then.    

In case even the thought of mid-term exams is casting a long shadow over your household, here are links to two ideas about how to manage stress productively.  The first is a TED talk by health psychologist Kelly McGonical entitled, How to Make Stress Your Friend.  The second is an article by Gavi King ’15, whose article,  Relax, Silly: Advice for Exam Week, which first appeared in the Waynflete Flyer in the spring of 2014.  Each offers wise counsel.

Monday, December 14, 2015

8:30 to 10:30 (8:00-11:00 Extended Time): Chemistry & 11/12 English Electives

10:45 to 12:45  (8:00-11:00 Extended Time): English 9

1:00 to 3:00 (11:30-2:30 Extended Time): PreCalculus (all), FST, Calculus, Mar Bio (10^th) & Music

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

8:30 to 10:30  (8:00-11:00 Extended Time): U.S. History I, AstroPhysics, and Advanced Bio

10:45 to 12:45  (11:30-2:30  Extended Time): Foreign Language Levels I and II

1:00 to 3:00  (11:30-2:30  Extended Time): Foreign Language Level III and beyond and Masterworks

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

8:30 to 10:30  (8:00-11:00 Extended Time): Biology, History 10 & Advanced Stats

Thursday, December 17, 2015

8:30 to 10:30  (8:00-11:00 Extended Time): Geometry (All), Computing I & History 11/12 Electives

10:45 to 12:45 (11:30-2:30 Extended Time): History 9 & Marine Bio (for 11^th & 12^th)

1:00 to 3:00  (11:30-2:30 Extended Time): Physics, Environmental Science I and English 10

Friday, December 18, 2015

8:30 to 10:30 (8:00-11:00 Extended Time): Algebra I (all), Algebra II (all), and Business and Finance

Makeup exams

Hello Everyone!

As many of you probably know, Waynflete has an amazing partnership with Students Shoulder to Shoulder and they have just announced their courses and course dates for the summer of 2016!  Here is a link to the SStS website.

Over 20 Waynflete students and 4 faculty have participated in the courses SSTS offers in the summer, both here in the U.S. and in several international locations.  It’s an amazing hands-on opportunity to learn about a different culture and sustainable development; almost all of the projects are with “green” NGOs (non-profit partner organizations) and the work is really meaningful. Most courses have a homestay.

If you want to learn more, please talk to any of the following alums from SSTS!

Students:

Jack Meahl: New Orleans

Peter Michalakes and Caleb Levine: Pine Ridge, South Dakota

Charlotte, Elisabeth Lualdi, Christian Rowe, Rowan May: Peru

​Ellis Heminway and Talia Greene: Bolivia

Emily Tabb, Ya Stockford and Henry Wasserman, Tibet

Bailey Sargent, LZ Olney, Isabel Canning – Kenya

Instructors:

Lydia Maier, Sarah Macdonald: Tibet

Jim Millard: Cambodia

Lindsay Clarke: Peru

This fall’s Upper School production of Legally Blonde celebrated and deepened the natural intersection of education and community at Waynflete. Staging a musical always creates a myriad of choices, and this year, a particularly difficult one arose at nearly the last minute.  In the face of the tragedy that befell our community just days before opening night, we had to decide whether or not the show would even go on.

Yeah, some choices are easier than others.  About two weeks before the opening, I found myself standing, head cocked in thought, weighing different features of a pair of blonde wigs: straight or curly locks, longish or just a little longer bangs? There are so many variables and this is just one of a myriad of choices that arise when directing and producing musical theater.  Theater requires attention to even the smallest choice. Wig selection is barely a blip compared to selecting the show itself, negotiating the performance dates, and arranging an ensemble from the gathered actors at auditions.

Elinor Fuchs, a Yale Professor of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism and one of my personal heroes, says, “It’s as hard to get from almost finished to finished as to get from beginning to almost done.” Three days before we opened, at a critical moment in our production process, the staff, cast, and crew were faced with our most difficult choice: whether or not, in the face of a tragedy permeating our community, to put on a show that would compel the actors to sing, dance, and smile.

There was no clearly “correct” way forward. Should we stop and cancel the show in order to save the 43 students the painful labor of grinning through tears and working throughout 11 hour days when they were already emotionally exhausted? Or, perhaps we should postpone production until the psychological fog lifted, if ever. What we chose to do was to persevere, to push through the fog, to hold up a light for ourselves, and to find our own way out.  

I really can’t say it any better than Tina Packer, Founding and Artistic Director of Shakespeare and Company in Massachusetts, “A theater is more than a Theater. It is a place for debate and exchange. It is a place for education. It is a place for community. At its core is humanity and understanding. Its contribution is creativity.”

Her words convey why I love theater, and why, in an age of tiny screened pics and personal video, we still ask our students to pursue and engage in live performance.  Gathering in darkened spaces in public masses to participate in living theater is an ancient impulse. To communally participate in storytelling seems to be rooted far more deeply than one could casually assess from the screen-faced non-interaction witnessed on the streets and in our own homes. This choice to enter into reciprocal and participatory storytelling and share these narratives elevates both the experience and the participants.

French theater director and actor, Jean Vilar, wrote that theater could be seen as a public service on the same level as gas, electricity, and water. I appreciate Mr. Vilar’s perspective that the community benefits of theater are as essential as fire and water are to health.  In our case, with the production coming at such a difficult time, the benefit to the Waynflete community of such a hilarious production ​took on a significant healing energy. It was truly a thrill to witness and contribute to the process of converting painful energy to celebration. Before three packed houses, the entire ensemble chose to engage and rose magnificently to the challenge, bringing the entire Waynflete community with them.

During the week before Thanksgiving break, 9th graders completed the first round of the Poetry Out Loud program classroom competition. Poetry Out Loud is a nationwide competition that celebrates poetry in its original form: recitation. Students across the country read and analyze poems from a Poetry Out Loud anthology and then select a poem they feel connected to that they feel they can express to a larger audience. Leading up to the competition, Waynflete 9th graders studied poetic forms and analyzed a variety of poems as they prepared for the event.

The following students were selected to advance based on their performance of these poems:

Tzevi Aho -“Concord Hymn” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bryce Brittingham – “The Maldive Shark” by Herman Melville
Maya Delong – “Sleeping Sister of A Farther Sky” by Karen Volkman
Henry Dorsky – “Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou
Charlotte Joseph – “Mingus at the Showplace” by William Matthews
Maia Lindner-Liaw – “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus
Ben Millspaugh -“Youth” by James Wright
Maya Schair-Rigoletti – “Monstance Man” by Ricardo Pau-Llosa
Max Soley – “The Kiss” by Robert Graves
Sophia Street – “Dirge in Woods” by George Meredith

These ten students will participate in a school-wide competition on January 5, 2016.

This past week the Waynflete Dream Factory activity sent 17 members to help make gingerbread houses as raffle items for the annual Haven’s candy fundraiser. This fundraiser is put together by all of the Southern Maine Dream Factory chapters each year and is a huge and tremendously fun way to not only raise money but also spread awareness about what the Dream Factory actually is.

In short, it is a non-profit organization that grants dreams to kids aged three to seventeen who are diagnosed with a chronic illness. In the simplest terms, chronic illnesses are lifelong conditions that can often be helped with medication but cannot be cured. Last year, the Waynflete DF club helped to send a Maine 12 year old diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes to Disney with his family. In just one year, the club raised over $500 and gave 11 cumulative days of community service.

If you are interested at all in the Dream Factory at Waynflete, don’t hesitate to contact me! You can reach me at or find me in the hallway at school 🙂

From left to right: (Back) Lily Fanburg 19, Carson Ford 19’, Annabel Huber 19’, Gaia Santoro Lecchini 19’, Ali Pope 17’, Emi Boedeker 19’, Emma Anghel 19’, Ava Thomas 18’, Eloise King-Clements 19’, (Front) Marady Parr 19’, Charlotte Rhodes 18’, Gail Johnson 16’, Tabby Al Musawi 19’, Sophia Mayone 17’, Phoebe Hart 19’, Claire Dubois 18’, Isabel Dubois 18’