Harriet Worrell: Founder Of Yoh Theater Takes Last Bow

By Katy Savage, Standard Staff

Harriet Worrell, the beloved theater program director at Woodstock Union High School, who created euphoria around productions is retiring after 26 years.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while and it just seemed like the appropriate time,” Worrell said.

Worrell doesn’t have plans for what she’ll do next, but there will be a noticeable loss in her absence.

She founded the Speakchorus and the Yoh Theater Players. In her theater program, everyone was welcome and everybody was equal, no matter how many lines they had. Anybody that showed up to act got a part, even if it meant Worell had to create one.

“Her program was a safe haven for people who didn’t feel like they fit in anywhere else,” said her daughter Perrin Worrell, who was a Yoh Player.

She even told students that she would treat them like her own children.

“Theater kids were like a small family,” 10th grade student Brittney Poljacik said. “The numbers in the group weren’t huge so you really knew everybody. She believed that you are able to do your best and you can get out there and wow the crowd.”

Worrell named the Yoh Theater Program after Woodstock Union High School history teacher Robert C. Yoh. She never met the man, but everywhere she went, his name came up.

She was a strict teacher, one students didn’t mess around with.

“When she needed something done, it got done,” said 11th grade student Alden Krawczyk.

Worrell constantly strove to make Yoh a top-notch program. Each play was fully designed, each moment was rehearsed, like any other professional theater program would be.

“It was never ‘this fits’ or ‘well we already have this,’” Worrell said. “We costumed our shows.”

Worrell had a vision for what she wanted each play to look like and her students wouldn’t leave the stage until a scene was done how she wanted it. Sometimes reaching her high standards meant staying at school until 7 or 8 p.m.

“Some nights it didn’t happen,” said Poljacik. But students came back the next day determined to please Worrell.

The Yoh players did 3-4 productions during the school year in addition to a number of summer shows. Worrell loved the classics.

“She chose to do a lot of plays that most high schools wouldn’t dare do because of their complexities,” said Perrin.

Worrell favored Shakespeare and finally had the right cast to pull off “Julius Caesar,” one of her favorites, a couple years ago. No play was too hard. She put difficult material in front of her students and expected them to learn it. Talent emerged simply because Worrell expected it to.

“She’s firm because she wants you to do your best and she know what that is, even if you don’t,” Perrin said.

Worrell turned speaking into an art form, creating the school’s Speakchorus, a rhythmical way of speaking that puts dramatic emphasis on certain words and phrases in a script.

“The theater program gave us art and doing the Speakchorus gave us adventure,” Worrell said.

It performed at every high school graduation and every Memorial Day service at the school.

In the early 2000s, WUHS was named a national school of distinction by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. for its Speakchorus. The other school honored that year was in Los Angeles.

The Speakchorus students were invited by Americans for the Art in Washington D.C. They performed at a congressional breakfast and met legislators and celebrities like Hector Elizondo.

Worrell first saw the idea of a Speakchorus in a play that her father was involved in. She tweaked it and called it the Speakchorus based on her mother’s tip: “When you name it, name it what it is, not some artsy name.”

Worrell is the daughter of an English teacher and a playwright. She said theater was part of her upbringing. She often wrote the scripts that the Speakchorus performed, never shying away from powerful themes, like sexual harassment, human rights and war.

She also wrote her own plays, like “Al and the Minstrels of Wonderment” — “Alice in Wonderland” from a male’s perspective. Worrell took extra time to accommodate all learning styles.

“She makes you want to work hard because she works so hard,” said her friend Rachel Benoit, who made costumes for Worrell’s plays. “She wanted each child to be successful.”

Worrell organized it so nobody was a “star.” There were masters who were the governing body of the group who achieved that status after participating in four productions or performances.

“It really became about running a top-notch theater program. The kids responded to that. They put in the long hours and extra work and just delivered,” Benoit said.

On Saturdays the theater students worked on set design and construction. She brought doughnuts and snacks while students painted scenes.

“Her students are proud to be her students. They know they can hold their heads up,” said her friend Cheryl Larson, whose five kids went through the program.

Worrell taught English at WUHS for a couple years before she became the teacher director. She began her teaching career in Texas at least three decades ago — so long back she can’t remember.

“It just kind of shakes you up. It’s not that it’s so hard,” she said about retiring.

For the first time in several decades she doesn’t have to succumb to a teacher’s schedule.

Worrell retired the year after her husband, Chuck, the driver’s education teacher at the school.

“It feels a little awkward not to have plans because in the business I was in, there always was plans,” she said.

This article first appeared in the July 30, 2015 edition of the Vermont Standard.