From November 14-16 on the Bartram stage was a production of eight short love stories called Almost Maine.
Laura Rippel, Head of the Fine Arts Department, explained that Almost Maine was somewhat like a romcom. “All of these eight different couples are having this moment all at the same time,” she said. “And it’s kind of a comedic and dramatic examination of the different types of love and stages of love.”
The play was written by John Cariani in 2004. The play includes eight short stories, or vignettes, and throughout the play all these stories have a central theme of either discovering or losing love in some way and takes place in Almost, Maine. The eight vignettes start with a prologue featuring characters Pete and Ginette, followed by scenes called Hear Heart, Sad and Glad, This Hurts, Getting it Back, They Fell, Where it Went, Story of Hope, Seeing the Thing
What interested Mrs. Rippel about this play in particular was the story-telling and overall the way love was portrayed. “I liked it because it really is an interesting way of examining the human experience. In my opinion, all art is about people. That’s the number one rule. All art is about people,” she said. “And I’m very interested in people, and so having the opportunity to try on different experiences and different lives. Human lives are exciting to me, because I’m just really interested in different people’s experiences.”
The idea of Almost Mane is to communicate the idea of love and the diversity of the human experience. This can be seen in the play’s opening act called “Her Heart,” where a woman is grieving her late husband and literally carries her heart in a paper bag. She meets a man who falls for her in his backyard, and he fixes her broken heart. The next vignette called “Sad and Glad” is about a guy named Jimmy who bumps into his ex-girlfriend Villian at a bar and learns she’s engaged and getting married tomorrow. Jimmy then struggles to move on.
An act called “Getting It Back” portrays a couple breaking up and the girl is telling the guy Lendall that they both need to have the love they gave each other, given back to themselves. Gayle, the woman, demands Lendall return all the love he invested into their relationship, and it shows the raw emotion and conflict of how breakups can go. Another powerful vignette, “Story of Hope,” follows a woman returning to Almost, Maine to accept a marriage proposal many years after it occurred, only to find the man has moved on.
Finally, “Seeing the Thing” tells of the story of a man named Dave who is trying to confess his love for a woman named Rhonda through a secret message in a painting he gave her.
The symbolism and representation behind these scenes are seen throughout the play, and many of the cast members believed the message was a lot deeper than some other experiences they’ve had.
“I really enjoyed this play and learned a lot more in comparison to the middle school plays I’ve done,”said Abby Naugle ’28, who played the characters Ginnette and Villian. “I think Almost Maine has a deeper and heartfelt message.”
Another member of the cast, Nate Zerkowski ‘25, who played a character named East, said, “I like how it’s several different stories that take place at the exact same time, and throughout the story, it’s not really told that, but you realize it and all the magical moments line up and it just it happens in such an order that works so well.”
Overall, the heartfelt story-telling theme behind Almost Maine shined on the Bartram Stage through the amazing direction of Rippel, the performances of the cast and the hard work of the tech crew; Abigail Cherry ‘27, Abby Naugle ’28, Aedan Melo ‘25, Andrew Wolpoff ‘26, Ava Weber ‘26, Brianna Curzio ‘26, Claire Kelleter ‘25, Cyrus Vaghefi ‘26, Dante Camarda ‘26, Eleanor McArthur ‘25, Francesca Tapley ’28, Nate Zerkowski ‘25, Olivia Owens ‘27, Sarah Anne Thomas ‘25, Scott Rywelski ‘25, Tristan Schneider.