The Maine Wire Op-ed: The Not-So-Secret Libretto Tricks of School Budget Intimidation

by Pem Schaeffer

I’ve been watching Brunswick school budget theatrics for a dozen years or more. After thinking about it, I concluded they remind me of “The Phantom of the Opera,” which we’ve seen three times on the stage and perhaps five times or more in the film version.

Why? Because as well as you think you know the script and music of a favorite show, each time you see it, you see and hear things you hadn’t picked up on before. And so it is with the annual school budget pageant, a tragedy used to intimidate local taxpayers until they fall under the spell of something akin to the “Music of the Night.”

New staging and new expressions of the original script keep the production fresh, and eager fans pay dearly to see it over and over. And always, when the mask comes off, illusions end and harsh reality sets in.

I’ve decided to catalog the standard “tricks of the stage” I’ve detected in the local production. I hope they’ll help you better understand the show when it comes to your town and make reading between the lines of the carefully adapted script a bit easier.

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