Kid who couldn’t read makes university dean’s list

Published in the Current

Before Arin Bratt came to Scarborough High School, he had been told he would never learn to read and wouldn’t make much of himself. His dyslexia was too severe. Last June, he left Scarborough High School, after his junior year, and now 18, is about to go into his junior year in college and made the dean’s list last semester.

“He always wanted to go to college,” said his mother, Susan Snow. Too shy to be interviewed himself, Bratt allowed his proud mother to speak for him. When he was growing up, his dyslexia meant he couldn’t read.

“We read everything to him,” Snow said. That included books, magazines and even the encyclopedia. Growing up, his peers made fun of him for being “stupid” or “dumb,” because he couldn’t read.

As a middle-schooler in Texas, Bratt was told that he had “plateaued” – that he would never learn to read and wouldn’t get much further in school.

“That’s when he really dug in,” said high school biology teacher, Ellen Ross, who later coached Bratt on the high school Academic Decathlon team. The family’s move from Texas to Scarborough also played a big role.

He was so determined to read, Snow said, that he quit playing soccer, and the family brought in a high school student who spent hours teaching him to read. After months of work, “he painstakingly got through about two sentences,” Snow said.

“He compensated by memorizing” everything that was said in his classes. He couldn’t really take notes, and it was pointless for someone else to take notes for him, because he couldn’t read them.

He could do math, but it was hard for him to show his work. Near the end of his freshman year, the family called a school conference to discuss whether Bratt would be allowed to take physics the following year with the seniors, instead of biology with the sophomores.

The high school physics class requires calculus, but Bratt had only taken geometry. Everyone agreed anyway, as long as Bratt took calculus at the same time.

“Any one of them could have said no,” Snow said.

“He was bright and quite motivated,” said physics teacher Dave O’Connor. “He was able to formulate a picture of an abstract thought quite easily.”

He did very well in class. “His analytical ability was phenomenal,” O’Connor said. “He wanted to understand things at a fundamental level.”

Bratt also knew that he needed foreign-language experience to get into college. Because of his difficulties learning from books, he planned to study in Costa Rica for a summer, to immerse himself in the language. When 9/11 happened, the trip was cancelled, forcing Bratt to take classes at USM instead.

He took other university classes, as well, particularly in math and science, earning college credit that would later help him skip an entire year of college.

He also dived into the Academic Decathlon team with a passion. “He was very focused,” said Ross, the team’s coach.

He learned so much that not only did he rank third individually in the nation for schools the size of Scarborough’s at the Academic Decathlon, but he also took advanced placement tests in five subjects, doing well enough to earn college credit for them as well.

“I think sometimes he amazed himself,” Ross said.

He was given extra time on the tests because of his reading difficulties, but he had to know all of the material involved, and communicate it clearly.

As his junior year progressed, he became interested in nanotechnology, the science of very tiny machines that involve all the sciences –biology, chemistry and physics.

The University of Texas at Dallas, which Snow calls “a think tank for nanotechnology,” offered Bratt early admission and a scholarship for him to study there. His college dream was real.

Technically speaking, he couldn’t graduate from high school until he finished his senior year. So he dropped out of school and got a GED instead, which required the consent of the superintendent because of his young age.

He started classes at UT-Dallas in the fall of 2002 and had enough college credit in advance to skip his sophomore year and start his junior year in the fall. He is double-majoring in physics and economics.

He still has accommodations for his spelling problems, but continues to make progress in that area. “As he reads more, he learns how to spell in context,” Snow said.

His reading continues to hover between the second- and fifth-grade reading levels. “I don’t think he’s ever gotten above fifth-grade reading level, but he compensates,” Snow said.

And despite his trouble reading and writing, Bratt is working on a book based on his original historical research on the Tripolitan war, a conflict in the early 1800s between the fledgling United States and the Barbary States, home to many pirates.

One of the players in the war was Portland-born Edward Preble, a naval commander.

And while his own hard work may be the source of his success, Snow said Bratt is deeply grateful to the staff of the Scarborough schools. “He feels as though they deserve all the credit,” Snow said.

“The school worked with him on his strengths,” she said. “Anyplace else wouldn’t have been open to that.”

Historic Cape house now part of bank suit

Published in the Current

A historic Shore Road house that has been under construction for some time is now at the center of a dispute between its owner, Darrell Mayeux, and Fleet Bank, which is requesting a judge put an additional lien on the property to cover money Fleet says Mayeux owes the bank.

The house, at 878 Shore Road, is mortgaged for $1.7 million to Fleet, but the mortgage itself is not part of the dispute.

Instead, Fleet and Mayeux are arguing over the terms of a $4 million loan Mayeux took out in August 2000 at the recommendation of a Fleet personal financial advisor.

At the time, Mayeux had a Fleet-handled investment portfolio worth more than $20 million, according to documents filed in Cumberland County Superior Court June 13. The loan was offered as a way for Mayeux to diversify his holdings, which were mostly stock in Fairchild Semiconductor, where Mayeux was a senior executive. He retired in August 2001.

According to court documents, Mayeux borrowed the money in August 2000, using his existing stock as collateral, but ran into trouble as the stock market tumbled, dramatically reducing the stock’s value.

To help cover the loan, Fleet sold – with Mayeux’s permission – 200,000 of Mayeux’s shares of Fairchild stock in late 2002.

Mayeux filed suit to stop a second sale, of 200,000 shares, in April 2003, but was unsuccessful, the documents state. The bank sold the shares, raising $2.2 million.

Now the bank is claiming that the sale of those 400,000 shares did not raise enough to pay off the loan, and wants liens placed on the Shore Road house, as well as Mayeux’s primary residence on Highland Road in South Portland, to cover the remaining $240,000 outstanding balance, plus $30,000 in attorneys’ fees and collection costs.

The bank is doing so for fear Mayeux will sell the two properties, and possibly other homes he owns in Falmouth and California, leaving Fleet with no way to recover its money.

Mayeux, for his part, filed a counter-suit claiming the bank mishandled his finances and botched its attempt to cover its losses. The counter-suit alleges Fleet failed to tell Mayeux when the value of his investment portfolio was dropping precipitously, sold shares it was not authorized to sell and incurred both unnecessary bank charges and capital gains tax on Mayeux’s behalf.

Mayeux’s filing also requests that a lien only be placed on the Shore Road house, because Fleet’s own assessment is that the property is worth as much as $3.5 million. The suit says the house is on the market for $3.8 million and is expected to sell for $3.6 million.

It also says “an informal offer of $3 million has been made” by an unnamed potential buyer.

The house, thought by many to be a John Calvin Stevens design, was originally designed by prominent local architect Austin W. Pease and built sometime before 1910, according to Earle G. Shettleworth Jr., director of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, who spoke to the Current in October. It was almost original as recently as 1998, but recent renovations have dramatically altered the historic character of the house, Shettleworth said.

The counter-suit also claims Mayeux does not have enough cash to pay as much as $1 million in capital gains tax owed as a result of Fleet’s sales of the Fairchild shares, and may have to “restructure” his finances.

Wonder and light: Fairy tales about fairy tales take flight at MSMT

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Since the 1952 hit movie Hans Christian Andersen, starring Danny Kaye, there have been several failed attempts to put the musical live on stage. Twice in the 1970s, the London Palladium theater produced adaptations of the movie, based on famed composer/lyricist Frank Loesser’s original music. And in 2000, the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco put on a rewritten version that failed to do justice either to the familiar tales or to the musical genius of a man who wrote for Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Broadway.

Critics loved the music in each version, but were nonplussed by the storytelling — not Andersen’s fairy tales, of course, but by writers’ explorations of the meaning and inspiration for his work.

Now in its third incarnation, Hans Christian Andersen is on the boards at Bowdoin College’s Pickard Theater, home to the Maine State Music Theatre, and is finally just right, if the opinion of Loesser’s widow means anything.

" I think that he would be very pleased, " said Jo Sullivan Loesser, only three hours before opening night last week. " I happen to think it’s some of his best work. "

And given previous criticism, it’s a positive sign that, as Jo said, " the only thing that’s the same is the music. " The rest has been totally rewritten by Tony Award–winning Maury Yeston, whose Broadway show Nine was up for eight Tonys last weekend, including best revival of a musical, which it won.

" I have been thinking about this for 15 years, " Yeston said. He wrote a version of it then, and revised it three years ago. Now, after further work, it’s set and going.

Kaye’s Andersen was a cobbler who told stories to amuse children but yearned to become a " serious " writer. Now we know better — that Hans (played here by Ken Barnett) was an aspiring writer facing tough competition in the age of Honoré de Balzac and Victor Hugo. Yeston’s script nods to the original: Now, the cobbler is Andersen’s father.

" I love the stories of Hans Christian Andersen. No one has done what this man did, " said Loesser. And no one has done what Frank did, either: " I think he captured his writing completely. " In the famous song " I’m Hans Christian Andersen, " Loesser’s lyrics bring out the wonder of inanimate objects, the sense of desire and humor in an interaction between a table and a chair, who come alive in music as surely as trees and rocks and earth do in Andersen’s tales.

The story for this production is about the coming of age of the man whose stories we grew up with. And rather than just sticking to the truth, it takes on its own life as a fairy tale about the king of the genre. And just as Loesser broke new ground in musical storytelling, so here does the character of Andersen open new doors in balletic narrative.

Yeston’s research revealed that Andersen printed his first story in 1835, the same year the Royal Danish Ballet was founded, and, shortly afterward, ballerinas started dancing en pointe. " Suddenly he found his voice, and suddenly romantic ballet was created, " Yeston said.

Andersen loved from afar Jenny Lind, a Swedish soprano born in 1820 who became famous in the 1840s. To simplify the plot and to further explore the parallels of Andersen’s life and the Royal Ballet, Yeston changed Lind to the fictional ballerina Jenny Starhaven (Amy Bodnar), the belle of the ballet ball.

A chance ticket to a Starhaven show changes Hans’s world, drawing him into working backstage at the ballet and later to writing a libretto, to impress Jenny and win her heart. The reality of the writing life serves as a backdrop, with a group boarding house offering a strong contrast to the privileged life of a ballerina.

From the beginning of the show, Andersen’s tales and Loesser’s songs about them are given new layers, new meanings that unfold like flowers meeting the dawn of a new day.

A late-night vision of Jenny gives Hans new energy and inspiration, as well as an idea. While Andersen might have claimed he saw a group of young ducks and developed " The Ugly Duckling, " here Hans seizes onto Jenny’s confession that she has not always known she is beautiful for the kernel of the story he writes about his love.

Yeston’s genius is to have this insight and to pair Loesser’s song of the story with a silly, fun dance (choreographed by Ginger Thatcher) including both ballet and tap style performances by duck-dancers complete with scuba-divers’ fins on their feet.

And though Yeston and Loesser never met, they work together as if old friends, bringing music, story, and character into a rich concert of life. The most successful song in the 1952 version was " Thumbelina, " which Kaye’s character invented to make a group of children smile. Here, a desperate Hans devises the tale to avoid eviction from his lodgings. Other songs serve to move the plot along as well: " Inchworm " scolds a bean-counting businessman, while " The Princess and the Pea " is an on-the-spot answer to a friend’s query about what Hans has been up to all day.

It is a magical experience for an audience, held voluntarily and pleasantly captive in the (blessedly) air-conditioned theater. The old familiar tunes take flight on the wings of Yeston’s plot, and with the top-notch performers at MSMT the songs reach deep from the souls of the on-stage characters to the cores of the people watching, bringing both laughter and stunned silence out of nowhere, as if the audience members themselves are in the cast.

The modern world has its own part in the show: Two characters (played by Lori Johnson and Seth Belliston) wear rollerblades every time they appear on stage, artfully gliding among the other cast members and embodying the flow of mind and heart through this tale. And without giving too much away, ultraviolet light is used to magical effect.

Which moves directly into costuming: Most designers are hard-pressed to work in regular light. Jimm Halliday handled the normal stuff with great skill, even conning a young boy into tails and culottes, where he seemed happy enough. And then Halliday explored other spectrums of light, other definitions of darkness.

The set, too, defied convention. Literally a frame of stories surrounding and supporting the play, the bookends fold back and reveal the life bustling beneath the pages. Intricate details were not ignored, and costumes, set and choreography married each other in polygamist festivals of color and movement, especially in the underwater scenes.

" We wanted to go somewhere that would give us a good production, " Jo said. Yeston agreed that they had found it: MSMT’s crew " can accomplish in three weeks what takes most people three months. " Yeston also raved about MSMT’s newly purchased rehearsal space, calling it " better than anything you can get in New York. "

Producers from all over the US and Europe have been badgering Jo and Yeston for months. " We’ve had to sort of fight them off " and make them wait until the show was ready, Jo said. She is finally allowing two English producers to see it, but not on opening night.

They have also had inquiries from Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden. Jo is considering a run in Denmark, too, Andersen’s home country. A theater just outside Copenhagen, in Malmo, might be just the place to catch this show again soon. When the Loessers went to Denmark in the 1960s, Frank was given a hero’s welcome, with " Wonderful Copenhagen " — the opening number in this performance — played everywhere they went, like " Hail to the Chief " for the US president.

But this script, this score, these roles will also see humbler stages. Jo envisions high school performances nationwide, and though she immediately gets her back up when people ask for the rights to Loesser’s work, she welcomes schools with open arms.

There will not be a Broadway production, however. " We don’t need to, " Jo says candidly. " We would rather play the country. " Just as Andersen’s stories continue to do.

Hans Christian Andersen
Written by Maury Yeston. Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser. Directed by Charles Abbott. Musical direction by Edward Reichert. With Ken Barnett and Amy Bodnar. Maine State Music Theatre through June 21. Call 207-725-8769.

State healthcare plan moves forward

Published in the Current and the American Journal

The governor’s healthcare plan is now out of committee and looks likely to pass the full Legislature later this week.

It is a plan the head of Maine Medical Center says is worth a shot, while the head of the Greater Portland Chambers of Commerce says the insurance piece of it is unworkable.

“I believe that the governor’s initiative is admirable, bold, courageous, necessary,” said Vincent Conti, president and CEO of Maine Medical Center, the state’s largest hospital.

The governor’s overall plan, called “Dirigo Health,” is in two parts: controlling health care costs through regulation and an insurance plan, confusingly called “Dirigo Health Insurance,” which would create a subsidized pool to being insuring some of the 180,000 Mainers who now do not have health insurance.

Following intensive work and deal-making between lawmakers, healthcare providers, insurance companies and businesses, a deal worked out Monday night tweaks the insurance portion of the plan to save what some believe may be the more important part: healthcare cost containment.

In particular, the deal includes a safety net in case the insurance plan doesn’t work: After three years, the state will have to report on whether numbers of uninsured people are dropping and whether insurance premiums are going down because people are using their insurance to go to the doctor before they get critically ill. If the plan isn’t working, the state will have to propose major revisions that will work.

Conti of Maine Medical Center has his doubts about the insurance piece of the plan, but is supporting the governor’s package because of its broader reform goals. He said the health care system in Maine, “if not in crisis now, is pretty much heading toward a train wreck.”

With an aging population in Maine needing more healthcare, demand is growing, at the same time advances in medical technology are making health care more expensive, Conti said.

The governor’s plan would ask hospitals to hold down their per-patient costs and would improve the existing healthcare planning system in the state, removing political pressures from decisions on where new facilities will be built. Decisions would be based on which facilities could offer the best clinical outcomes because of proven expertise.

The state would augment an existing database now run by the Maine Health Management Coalition, compiling statistics on healthcare costs and treatment
outcomes, to give the public more information about how much modern medicine costs.

The second part, the health insurance plan, is intended to fix the healthcare payment system, in which 180,000 Mainers do not have health insurance. Because they lack coverage, they tend to wait until they are very ill and then go to what Conti calls “the single most expensive place in the universe” to get healthcare: the emergency room.

They can’t pay their bills, and the money must come from somewhere else. This cost-shifting is made worse because Medicaid and Medicare payments pay just 80 percent of the actual cost of care provided to their patients.

All of the unpaid money must be made up from the only remaining source: privately insured people and their insurance companies.

That drives up the cost of healthcare bills to private insurers, which in turn ups premiums for insurance coverage. Fewer people can afford insurance, and so more become uninsured, raising the specter of a vicious spiral in which, eventually, nobody will be able to afford health insurance.

Dirigo Health Insurance would be a state-assembled pool of uninsured people who would have access to – and some state funding to pay for – a state-designed health insurance plan provided by the private insurance company that bids the lowest in a state-run auction.

The plan has come under criticism because it would require employers and employees to purchase health insurance at or close to market rates, which are too high for many to bear.

Godfrey Wood, president and CEO of the Greater Portland Chambers of Commerce, has proposed moving forward with the healthcare system reform piece of the plan right away, and working through the summer to fine-tune the insurance segment.

Wood said more than half of the funding for the governor’s plan would come from individuals and employers, who are not now paying anything toward health insurance premiums, leaving workers and families uninsured.

He said “very few” businesses would sign onto the Dirigo Health Insurance plan because it wouldn’t be much cheaper than existing health insurance.

“It’s a very rich plan at a very inexpensive price,” projections he does not think are realistic. “Individuals can’t afford it now. Businesses can’t afford it,” Wood said.

A healthy summer diet: Including luscious theatrical fruit

Published in the Portland Phoenix

It’s summer in Maine, and there’s so much to do. Make sure one of those things on the to-do list is to not just eat but sit back and enjoy a good, fresh piece of locally grown theater fruit.

Here, hand-picked for you, are this summer’s ripest and freshest, juicy with passion and alive with color and light, direct from my to-do calendar to yours, starting right away, and moving through the season between the muds, with a different taste each time:

First, the starfruit — the top items of each month. If you can only manage a few theatrical antioxidants in your diet, don’t miss these.

• June is already here. If you only can make room for one production, get going early and whet your appetite — maybe you’ll crave more. The all-out gem of the summer, not to be missed, is " Hey, We’re Acting Over Here, " a festival of short plays hosted by the Cast, made up of Craig Bowden, J.P. Guimont, and David A. Currier. These three are theater geniuses we’ll hope to keep around Maine for a long, long time. They’ll be on stage performing David Mamet, David Ives, and Christopher Durang, alongside some of their most talented friends and colleagues, including Joshua Stamell. It’s at the St. Lawrence Arts Center, in Portland; curtain is at 8 p.m. June 19, at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. June 21, and at 3 p.m. June 22. Tickets $10, available at the door.

• In late June and early July, Maine’s newest theater company, the Stage, will put on its first performance in a historic outdoor venue at Fort Preble. Macbeth will star the Stage’s founders, Seth Rigoletti and Miranda Hope, who view the play’s theme of violence begetting violence as cathartic and enlightening in these troubled times. Find them at Spring Point, in South Portland, June 25 to July 12 (except July 4). Curtain is at 8 p.m. on Wed. through Sat. Tickets are free, but call (207) 828-0128 for reservations and updates in case of bad weather.

• A late July highlight will be Winter Harbor Theatre speaking out again, with a reprise of their stunning production of Tony Kushner’s antiwar play Only We Who Guard The Mystery Shall Be Unhappy. If you missed this brilliantly written and powerfully performed show in April, now you get a second chance. Again the audience and actors will be under the gaze of Robert Shetterly’s portraits of Americans Who Tell The Truth. It’s at the St. Lawrence Arts Center, in Portland. Gallery opens at 7 p.m., curtain is at p.m., July 30 and 31. Tickets free, available at the door.

• August will see the fourth annual Deertrees Theatre Festival, a collaboration with New York City’s Greenlight Theatreworks to bring to Maine four plays from New York. This year we’ll get Ira Levin’s Dr. Cook’s Garden, a thriller about the happiest and healthiest small town in Vermont; Vanities, Jack Heifner’s 1960s and ’70s coming-of-age story; the Tony-winning Art, by Yazmina Reza, about male friendship, intellectual honesty, and what defines art; and Driving Miss Daisy, by Alford Uhry, the Pulitzer- and Oscar-winning drama set in the antebellum South. All shows are at Deertrees Theatre, in Harrison, start at 8 p.m. and cost $16. Call (207) 583-6747. Dr. Cook’s Garden shows Aug. 7 and 8; Vanities shows Aug. 14 and 15; Art shows Aug. 21 and 22; Driving Miss Daisy shows Aug. 28, 29, and 30.

And now for the rest of this summer’s luscious fruit salad, in chronological order by starting date:

• A sure-to-succeed play about a failing show is Light Up The Sky by Moss Hart at the Gaslight Theater. Theater insiders fear their show will flop and begin to self-destruct. Then they realize the play is a dark-horse success. Where is the line between commercialism and art? It’s at the Gaslight Theater, in Hallowell, June 19 to 21 and June 26 to 28. Call (207) 626-3698 for times and ticket prices.

• The Theater at Monmouth’s summer season will be alive with Shakespeare, comedy, and classics. Shakespeare lovers will adore Two Gentlemen of Verona, Julius Caesar, and The Compleat Wrks of Willm Shkspr, abridged by Singer, Long, and Borgeson. Also, TAM favorite Janis Stevens will have a one-night performance of the one-woman show written for her, Vivien, about actress Vivien Leigh. All shows are at The Theater at Monmouth, in Monmouth. Call (207) 933-9999 for show times. Tickets are $18 to $26. Two Gents shows July 5 through Aug. 23; Caesar shows July 25 through Aug. 22; Compleat Wrks shows Aug. 12 and 19; Vivien shows Aug. 5.

• Deertrees Theatre has several other productions, besides the festival listed above. They include Susan Poulin’s show Franco Fry or Pardon My French, a thoughtful exploration of her Franco-American heritage; and Exceptions to Gravity, by Avner Eisenberg, who, it is said, was once arrested in France for " buffoonery in public. " Both shows are at Deertrees Theater, in Harrison. Call (207) 583-6747. Franco Fry shows July 18. Tickets $14. Exceptions to Gravity shows Aug. 9. Tickets $16.

• The Maine Shakespeare Festival will move this year from the riverfront to the Bangor Opera House, but budget troubles have forced the cancellation of the two scheduled Shakespeare performances as well as one musical. Now, they will perform only The Fantasticks, and will offer matinees for the first time, as well as indoor plumbing. At the Bangor Opera House, in Bangor, July 24 through Aug. 9, on Thursday through Saturday. Tickets range from $17 to $25 (donate an extra buck to help keep them alive). Call (207) 942-3333 for prices and times.

• If it rains during the first two weeks of August, you can find an indoor seat at a play about that very predicament. Acadia Repertory Theater will put on Relatively Speaking: A Summer Comedy, by Alan Ayckbourn, a top English comic playwright. The play is described as what people do " when their seaside summer holidays were spoiled by the rain and they came to the theater before trudging back to their landladies. " It’s at Acadia Repertory Theater, on Mt. Desert Island. Curtain is at 8:15 p.m., Tues. through Sun., from July 29 through Aug. 10. Tickets $20. Call (207) 244-7260.

• Frank Wicks of the Theater Project will see another in a string of intermittent performances of his play Soldier, Come Home, a readers’ theater piece based on the letters to and from his great-grandparents, written between 1859 and 1865, as his great-grandfather served in the Union Army. At First Parish Church, in Brunswick. Curtain is at 7:30 p.m., Aug. 8. Tickets $10. Call (207) 729-6606.

• Two bickering sisters wait through the summer for the whales to migrate as they have for years in The Whales of August, at the Lakewood Theater. David Berry’s play takes a poignant look at family, dependency, and aging in the soft light of summer. At Lakewood Theater, in Skowhegan. Curtain is at 8 p.m. Aug. 14 and 21, at 8:15 p.m. Aug. 15 and 16, at 6:45 p.m. Aug. 17 and 19, and at 2 p.m. Aug. 20. Tickets $17 to $22. Call (207) 474-7176.

• And, all summer long, the Players’ Ring, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, will keep things alive with their usual edgy, rough, bright, and unheralded style. Every weekend, July 4 through August 23, will see a new performance by a variety of local actors. Locally written one-acts are represented, as are well known plays and playwrights. Visit www.playersring.org for more details on the shows, and call (603) 436-8123 for times and ticket prices.