High School Days

 

Beverley Baker........ Writer and Director Jessica Bergey........ Videographer and Editor Marilyn Penyige....... Assistant Director, Stagehand, and Student Marian Bennett........Musical Director, Stagehand, and Student Ruth Mary Engel...... Pianist and Student Joan Sherk.............."Maggie" David Sherk............."Joe" Fred Codd................"Joey" Marg Craig..............."Katy"-Gym Teacher Arthemise Lalonde..."Mademoiselle"-French Teacher Pat Collver................"Senorita"-Spanish Teacher Barbara Corkum......."Rosie"-Latin Teacher Bernice Courtney......"Ms McClelland"- Latin Student Students/ Cameo Roles: Catherine Ashton      Shirley Breckles          Rheal Dionne Carol Bylow              Jean Dionne                Harry Engeland Kaye Kelly                Bill Lalonde                  Irene Prince Moe Seymour          Jeannette Schumann   Martin Schumann ‘High School Days’ tells of a long-married couple revisiting scenes of when they were young. On another level, the story is a tribute to Orillia’s first high school which, just a few months ago, was demolished leaving a gap that causes a pang to those who knew it. Many of our residents spent their teen years there. For those who did not, Orillia Collegiate was, ‘like any school you ever knew’, a place of sports and studies, of homework and heartbreak, of teachers whom we ridiculed with nicknames, but remember with respect.

High School Days is a musical love story about Maggie and Joe who recently celebrated their many decades of marriage at a party arranged by their son. Young Joey has only one flaw in the eyes of his parents, and that is that he has not found a wife to give them grandchildren. The young man’s reason, he sings, is “I want a girl just like the girl that married dear old Dad.” Still in the afterglow of their celebration, Maggie and Joe are shocked to learn that, after years of municipal shilly-shallying over its future, the old high school where they met and fell in love, has lately been demolished without fanfare. In the attic Joe finds a dusty box of mementoes, among them an old yearbook, some photos, and a crumbling pressed corsage. As the old folks sort through their treasures, we see scenes and hear the songs of those long ago days, a Wednesday morning assembly, and a pep rally with the school song, ‘They teach us this and that, Palmam qui meruit ferat.’ We hear the team cheers, ‘Orillia Collegiate, on to victory!’ And the nonsense rhymes, ‘Themistocles, Thermopylae, the Peloponnesian war...’. Maggie tells us that, ‘The gym by day is a place of sweat...

...but the gym by night is a magical place... girls in gowns... boys looking debonair. Swaying hand in hand...’ Their tender moment is interrupted by a flying visit from Joey with exciting news of his own!