Schoolhouse

The time: 1938. The place: S.S. #1 Jericho School, a one-room schoolhouse in a farming area just outside the fictional village of Baker’s Creek. There, a delightful but unmanageable group of children finally meets its match-Melita Linton, an 18-year-old teacher fresh out of Normal School. But Miss Linton soon faces her own challenge, in the form of Ewart, a menacing and mysterious juvenile delinquent sent to straighten out on a farm after doing time in Battenville Training School. The play chronicles Miss Linton’s struggle to connect with a boy who has cut himself off from everyone, including himself-and to persuade the cautious and close-knit community to open its arms to this stranger in their midst. Full of warmth and poignant humour, Schoolhouse evokes a way of life shared by generations of rural North Americans, exploring timeless themes of rejection, of compassion, of damage, of hope. It is a story about insiders and outsiders, and the fact that every time you draw a circle, some things are inside the circle and some things are not. In the end, the play is about those on the outside-about people who often don’t have the words to express themselves or the training to cope with their lives but who have to get through anyway-those we leave behind to their own devices, who set themselves free. Cast of 5 women and 7 men.