2/17/23 - Friday Forget-Me-Nots by Jim Silcott

Photo Caption: Valentine's Day Parties

Dear Our Lady of Peace Family,

Last weekend I attended a fund raiser for the Little Theatre (we always used the British spelling!) Program at Bishop Watterson High School. In my time at Watterson I spent a fair amount of time within those walls so I have special place in my heart for the drama/musical program there.

When Watterson was first built in the early 1950’s, in an attempt to be utilitarian, there was a stage at the north end of the school cafeteria. Fortunately, somebody talked somebody into building a theatre addition which was constructed about ten years later. Unfortunately, for a school of its size it was indeed a “little” theatre, only seating a couple of hundred people in hard wooden seats. The only off-stage area was to the right of the stage. There was a room under the stage, which, just before my time served as the senior smoking lounge! Later it became the green room, the dressing room and the set construction area. It was, and is, small and cramped.

I student taught at Watterson in the winter of 1979 and assisted my friend, Kevin Smith with a winter drama, The Miracle Worker, as well as the spring musical, Oklahoma. When I was hired in the fall to be an English teacher, John Durant, the principal, had me continue to assist Kevin. I got 50 bucks a show!

It was Kevin who realized that the stage, as designed and built, was too small to put on real productions. He added a wooden apron to the front. After selling far more tickets than there were seats for the musical, South Pacific, in the spring of 1980, row letters and seat numbers were carefully stenciled onto the back of the seats by our student director, Marty Straub.

After Kevin left Watterson, I took over the shows, and was joined by John Modecki-Mellett. With the help of assistant principal, Tom Scholl we made the apron extension permanent with brick and cement and took the slippery classroom tile off of the stage floor. As the program grew, the stage and theater and space underneath did and could not. Doing a spring musical in May in a packed house with no air conditioning made conditions uncomfortable for everyone. There was no sound system and there was a constant balance between the student actors trying to sing and the student orchestra trying to play.

When I left Bishop Watterson in 1989, John Modecki-Mellett, along with Sharon Alloway ran the program for many years. When I returned to Watterson in 2000 to be assistant principal, they were kind enough to let me direct the musicals again for the five years that I was back.



Since then, the theatre replaced the wooden seats and added air conditioning, better lights, and a sound system. When John and Sharon retired, Liz O’Dorsiso, whom I had the pleasure of directing when she was a student, took over the theatre and has gone far beyond anything I was ever to accomplish. It is a true program now with year-round activities and as many opportunities for backstage students as there are for performers. Her talented brother, Mike, with whom I also got to work with when he was a student, assists her, along with some fabulously talented parent volunteers. Kudos also to long time band director, Mike Renzi, who after an initial shock of the musical selected each year (“You want to do West Side Story?!”) always delivers a great orchestra.

The Theatre department is trying to raise $500,000 to further transform the limited space they are given and enhance it for the benefit of students and their audience. Bishop Watterson has done a great job with its athletic field and its second gym. I hope that they reach their goal to be able to enhance the arts. I have no doubt with Liz at the helm that they will.

If you want to donate you can do so at: https://bwhs.ejoinme.org/MyPages/DonationPage/tabid/140771/Default.aspx. If you were involved in the musicals during my times there, do me a favor and donate in honor of the late Mrs. Nancy Essman, the long time choir director who could get even tone deaf football players to sing harmony!

This spring during the weekend of March 24-26 they are performing one of my favorite musicals, Damn Yankees, which I got to do in the 1986. It’s a great show based on the Faustian legend and has one of the best Broadway tunes ever created, “You’ve Got to Have Heart,” sung by a baseball team that can’t win a game. Perhaps the Blue Jackets might want to start singing it!

Jim Silcott