When Kaylin Porter auditioned for Bucksport’s middle school musical last year, her biggest fears went away.
The 14-year-old used to be shy and scared to sing in front of people, but friends told her it would be fun to try out. During rehearsals, Porter made new friends and got more confident. After the first show, she felt “ecstatic,” telling friends and family she might want to keep acting in college.
Others like her who performed in middle school love theater so much that they aren’t very interested in other extracurriculars, according to Porter.
“Everybody I know who does drama wants to do a musical so bad,” she said.
But now that they’re in high school, they can’t: Bucksport High School hasn’t staged one in six years. Its theater program declined as leaders departed, and unlike at other area high schools, it wasn’t quick to rebound from the pandemic. Students lost interest.
Now, alumni who spent their own youths in the performing arts at RSU 25 are working to build the program back up, and parallel efforts are underway to revive the town’s spacious performing arts center inside the middle school. Together, local groups hope to bring new life to Bucksport’s cultural scene despite some challenges in drawing public interest and finding volunteers.
The high school might be ready to stage a musical again by next year.
When current middle school drama coach and Bucksport Area Cultural Arts Society president Jes Ormsby attended Bucksport High School in the 1990s, it had a vibrant drama program led by Spanish teacher Peter Clain. He had a contagious love for theater and expected a lot of his performers for decades, Ormsby recalled. The town renamed the auditorium in his honor after his death in 2020.
But in her view, enthusiasm for the arts has dropped recently. Coaching drama in particular is a lot of work with a small stipend, meaning it’s essentially a volunteer role, which organizations around the state have increasingly struggled to fill.
“I hate to see the arts begin to die out,” Ormsby said.
When she started four years ago, hoping to grow interest at the high school by starting with younger students, she found just enough of them for a musical. Now, there are more kids auditioning than open roles.
Shows have almost sold out on weekends; families are excited, and community support has been “overwhelming.”
Like Clain, Ormsby pushes her students to work hard — which they tell her is important. They may not realize they can be serious and accomplish something big, Ormsby said, but once they do, they want more. That inspires other students to try.
Eventually, she wants to bring the program to an equal level with the district’s sports teams, she said.
Drama has had to compete with athletics for local attention at times, according to Olivia West, who graduated from Bucksport High School in 2020. But she hopes that staging shows people know will help build up interest.
West became the high school drama coach in 2023, starting with participation in Maine’s statewide one-act festival, where students compete with short plays.
Now a teacher at the district’s elementary school, West spent her middle and high school years devoted to theater.
“It was kind of what I lived for,“ she said.
Like Ormsby, West was fairly new to directing; she gives students an outline of what she wants and then lets them bring the characters to life.
Bucksport has already finished as a runner-up at one-acts twice in the last three years, and participation has doubled to about 20 students.
Adding a musical requires a paid music director, and West said she’s been working with the district to find a candidate without success. Still, she said it’s possible a musical will return next year.
She’d also like to see upgrades to the performing arts center, which is a renewed focus for BACAS, too. That nonprofit is restarting from its own pandemic pause.
The auditorium was built in 2003 as part of the middle school, and was funded by the district, the state, BACAS and the town. Voters approved pitching in $500,000 to expand it from the 125 seats that state construction funds covered to nearly 500, according to Bangor Daily News archives. Leaders said then that it was a resource the town had been missing.
“All along, we’ve said: ‘If we build it, they will come,’” Lisa Whitney, BACAS’ secretary at the time, told the Bangor Daily News when the auditorium opened. “We want to make sure that area residents have some place they can find family-oriented entertainment.”
It’s been used less by outside groups since — in some years, not at all, according to the town’s economic development director, Rich Rotella. He calls it the most underutilized place in Bucksport.
It’s not as walkable from downtown restaurants as the 125-seat Alamo Theater, he said, and its larger capacity may be intimidating for smaller acts.
School rules also prohibit any food or drink, which Ormsby believes has reduced ticket sales. She may suggest trying to relax that restriction in the future.
Perhaps the biggest limitation is its technology. Lights came secondhand from another theater upgrading its own facilities in 2003. A few no longer work and are too old to replace. They’re managed with the original control board, which uses a floppy disk to function, and the sound system is a “big roadblock” for bringing in more acts, according to Ormsby.
Overall, the auditorium could use hundreds of thousands of dollars in upgrades, she said.
Some funding is available from the school, BACAS and grant programs. As the nonprofit and the drama programs get back on their feet, the groups are planning out what upgrades to request. BACAS has also started fundraising.
“When approached the correct way, it is going to be something that [the district] is interested in,” West said of upgrades.
This year, the center is hosting a concert by the Bagaduce Chorale for the first time, and for the last two years BACAS has brought in comedian Juston McKinney, slowly ramping up its offerings.
BACAS could also use more volunteers to keep growing, according to Ormsby.
“It’s important to me because I want to build the arts back up,” she said.
Meanwhile, though Porter can’t be in a musical this year, the ninth-grader is signing up for one-acts and volunteering to help with the middle school show.
“This is something I want to pursue as I’m growing,” she said.
