Although the islands appear quiet this time of year—summer houses drained and closed up, fields frozen, seasonal businesses closed—for North Haven Community School students, winter is the busy season.
Between basketball, major research projects, yearbook preparation and homework, the school’s 17 high school students sometimes feel stretched pretty thin. Adding another commitment on top of that seems like a daunting proposition, which is why Drama Director Courtney Naliboff decided to try something different this year.
Each March, students from the 8th through 12th grades at the North Haven Community School travel to the mainland to compete in the Maine Principal’s Association Maine Drama Festival.
The regional competition, held this year for midcoast schools at Rockland High School on March 5 and 6, consists of four Class A schools (over 550 students) and five Class B schools (under 550 students), each performing a short one-act play before a large audience of students, parents and community members and a panel of judges from the theater world.
The winners from the regional competition go to the state level later that month. At a competition where the other “small schools” have literally hundreds more high school students than North Haven, island participants sometimes feel lost in the crowd.
Principal Barney Hallowell attended last year’s competition, at Camden Hills Regional High School, and felt the size disparity strongly. “We were just overwhelmed by the number of kids in the other productions and the huge audiences that came to support them,” he said.
Naliboff, who also teaches music and English, often has trouble convincing students to perform in the play, as rehearsals are generally held after school—just one more thing to add to the workload. This year, the rehearsal and design process is being offered as a class. All high school students are participating, and in ways they feel comfortable.
“We came up with this idea of asking all of the students in our high school—all 17 of them—to participate and make a little more of a splash, at least in the numbers game which seems to be a factor, like it or not,” said Principal Barney Hallowell, “and they all wanted to, whether as actors or stage hands or technicians or set builders.”
Part of the challenge for Naliboff was to make the show appealing to all of the students. To accomplish that, she turned to island resident A. G. Alexander, a class of 2000 graduate of North Haven Community School. Alexander is a member of the boat-building Brown family, where he works, and his island roots help bridge the gap still felt between some islanders and the arts community. He accepted a commission to write a one-act play for the students.
Naliboff said she asked him to write something in which students could portray students, in roles they felt comfortable inhabiting. Alexander responded with For the Love of Zooey, a romantic comedy set on a playground that brings to mind both Two Gentlemen of Verona and the animated children’s show Recess.
Because Alexander wrote the parts with specific students in mind—some of whom had never been in a production—they felt comfortable stepping into the roles. “The part was a great opportunity that had never really presented itself before,” said Stephanie Brown, who plays Jackie, confidante to the lovelorn male characters. “The character was written with me in mind and the play is so funny I just could not pass up the chance to be a part of it,” she said. This production has the largest cast of any one-act entry in recent years, with nine students acting—over half the high school.
Alexander’s other works, Rocking Horse, Zelda, and BOOM! Times Five have been produced at Waterman’s Community Center as part of their summer season since 2007. His thoughtful yet raucous comedies are well received by the community, and even draw in some islanders who generally steer clear of the arts. Naliboff hopes that connecting students with an island playwright will reinforce the idea that the arts are for everyone, and contribute to the sustainability and longevity of the island arts programs.
Hallowell said the project appeals to him because it adheres to the school’s identity and practices—inclusive, experiential, project-based, personalized and founded on the notion of community. “Our school motto is ‘Competence, Compassion, Challenge and Community,’ and this speaks to each of those—the smallest public school in the state having its entire high school present a work of great quality by one of its graduates to show what we can do and take on the Goliaths,” he said.
Lisa Shields is Arts Coordinator at North Haven Community School.