CARIBOU, Maine — Caribou High School will host the Maine Regional Drama Festival for the first time in six years on March 8 and 9.
CHS Principal Travis Barnes said he was approached by the Maine Drama Council about hosting, and that he thought it would be a great opportunity for the city as well as help reignite interest in drama, a program that is not currently offered at the high school due to budget cuts.
Despite drama not being offered at CHS, the Caribou Performing Arts Center, located on the high school campus, helped members of the Maine Principal Association and Maine Drama Council ultimately decide to host the event in Caribou.
CHS also will host a “tech day” on March 2, in which the nine participating schools (which come from as far north as Fort Kent and as far south as Gorham) will not bring their full teams, but their tech crews will attend from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and familiarize themselves with the stage and lighting setup in the venue. The crews may also decide then to install new lighting if they believe it will better suit their school’s performance.
The drama competition will be broken into three sessions containing plays from three schools. The first session begins on the evening of March 8 with Easton High School performing “A Play With Words” at 6 p.m., Houlton High School performing “Lockdown” at 7 p.m., and Fort Kent High School performing “For Whom The Southern Belle Tolls.” at 8 p.m.
The next session will begin at noon on the following day, with Presque Isle High School performing “The Insanity of Mary Girard” at noon, Camden Hills Regional High School performing “You & Mia” at 1 p.m., and Bangor High School performing “Prometheus” at 2 p.m.
The final session will be in the evening of March 9, during which Lee Academy will be perform “PUSH” at 5 p.m., Stearns High School will put on “The Distracted Scholar’s Guide to Literature and Drama” at 6 p.m., and Gorham High School will perform “Antigone Now” at 7 p.m..
Barnes said he has never hosted a drama festival in the past, as the school’s drama program was eliminated before he became principal.
Because of this, he said organizing the event would not have been possible without the help of three local individuals: Virginia White, Richard Ezzy, and John Belanger. Barnes said White, a former drama instructor who also served as the CPAC director, will be the site director for the event, adding that she “was very willing to chat and be the director for the weekend.”
Ezzy, according to Barnes, will be the house supervisor. The principal said Ezzy has a significant amount of experience bringing events to the CPAC as well as with ticketing, promotion, and crowd management.
“We’ll have a big crowd with nine different schools, and [Ezzy] was integral in getting this off the ground,” Barnes said.
The principal said Belanger will be the tech director, and that he will “really make this weekend happen,” and that he is taking care of lighting, sets, and props.
“He’s been a part of this in the past,” said Barnes of Belanger. “He’s been going back through the archives and making himself familiar with what we’ve done before. All three of them have really allowed us to move forward with this and bring the Maine Regional Drama Festival back to Caribou. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without them.”
Tickets are $5 for students and $8 for adults.
