Piti Theatre’s “Your Town” program was honored to receive a “Rising Star” Award from the MA History Alliance over the summer. Our next premiere happens December 11 over the interwebs presented by long term collaborator, Friends of Merrymeeting Bay, an environmental group dedicated to protecting the region that drains almost 40% of Maine’s fresh water into the Atlantic.
Friends of Merrymeeting Bay’s (FOMB) third presentation of their 28th annual Winter Speaker Series, Our Town! Adventures in Richmond History features the Piti Theatre Company and the 2023-2024 Fourth Graders of Richmond’s Marcia Buker Elementary School. Winter Speaker Series presentations are again being held via Zoom and are accessible via hyperlink at the top of the FOMB web page: fomb.org. This event takes place Wednesday, December 11th at 7 pm.
Can’t make it? Watch on Piti’s “Your Town” page starting on Friday, December 13, 2024.
This program premieres the “living history” streaming theatre-meets-documentary work FOMB and Piti Theatre did in early 2024 with 4th grades of the Marcia Buker elementary school in Richmond. The project looks at historical, cultural and social roots of our contemporary environmental challenges here in Merrymeeting Bay and around mid-coast Maine through the lens of local history-in this case ice harvesting, dairy farming, ship building and spinning mills, topics chosen by the students. In collaboration with Piti Theatre Company (via a one week residency and more), the program produced film, songs, script, and research becoming a resource for local schools, colleges, libraries, historical societies and conservation groups.
Similar examples are Piti’s “Dexter and the Dinosaurs” theatre-meets-film project produced in Greenfield, MA. (Note the kids in this production all regularly attended acting classes.) and closer to home, a program FOMB and Piti did with approximately 80 Bowdoin Central School students in 2021-2022, premiering in May 2023, (see 2023 FOMB newsletter pages 2 & 3) and that may be viewed at the bottom of this page. The FOMB 2024 Spring newsletter (pages 2 & 3) feature a good story on the Richmond project.