Winter Speaker Series

2024-2025 Zoom Speaker Series


Our Town! Adventures in Richmond History

Piti Theater and Marcia Buker Elementary 4th Graders 2023-2024

Wednesday, December 11, 2024 at 7:00 pm
Register for Zoom Meeting



Working in the Mill


Friends of Merrymeeting Bay’s (FOMB) third presentation of their 28th annual Winter Speaker Series, Our Town! Adventures in Richmond History features the Piti Theatre Company and the 2023-2024 Fourth Graders of Richmond’s Marcia Buker Elementary School. Winter Speaker Series presentations are again being held via Zoom and are accessible via hyperlink at the top of the FOMB web page: fomb.org. This event takes place Wednesday, December 11th at 7 pm.

This program premieres the "living history" streaming theatre-meets-documentary work FOMB and Piti Theatre did in early 2024 with 4th grades of the Marcia Buker elementary school in Richmond. The project looks at historical, cultural and social roots of our contemporary environmental challenges here in Merrymeeting Bay and around mid-coast Maine through the lens of local history-in this case ice harvesting, dairy farming, ship building and spinning mills, topics chosen by the students. In collaboration with Piti Theatre Company (via a one week residency and more), the program produced film, songs, script, and research becoming a resource for local schools, colleges, libraries, historical societies and conservation groups.

Moving Ice Onto the Conveyor and Into the Ice House

Similar examples are Piti’s "Dexter and the Dinosaurs" theatre-meets-film project produced in Greenfield, MA. (Note the kids in this production all regularly attended acting classes.) and closer to home, a program FOMB and Piti did with approximately 80 Bowdoin Central School students in 2021-2022, premiering in May 2023, (see 2023 FOMB newsletter pages 2 & 3) and that may be viewed at the bottom of this page. The FOMB 2024 Spring newsletter (pages 2 & 3) feature a good story on the Richmond project.

FOMB hosts their Winter Speaker Series October-May, on the second Wednesday of each month. Due to the Covid 19 pandemic and ability for participants to attend from out of the area, the series continues via Zoom. The FOMB January 8th presentation: Getting to Know Rachel Carson, features Barbara Vickery, retired Director of Conservation at The Nature Conservancy, Maine Chapter.This event takes place at 7:00 pm with the Zoom registration link available at www.fomb.org a week or so prior to the presentation.

Speaker Series presentations are free, open to the public. Visit www.fomb.org to see speaker biographies, full event schedules, video recordings of past presentations, become a member, and learn more about how you can help protect beautiful Merrymeeting Bay and the Gulf of Maine.

For more information contact FOMB at 207-666-3372 or edfomb@comcast.net.


Funded in part by the New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Touring Program and the six New England state arts agencies.

 
Watercolors by
Sarah Stapler