OUR STORY

Throughout the nineteen-nineties our Northern Michigan homeschool group met weekly for enrichment classes and socializing.  Gym activities, field trips and science experiments filled our typical once-a-week homeschool afternoon.  In 1997, homeschool mom Mickey Walker, began teaching a drama class to the grade school children.  They had a lot of fun and much of what they learned was used in the annual homeschool talent show.   While the younger children were having acting lessons, I looked for an activity for the small cluster of teens, who happened to be all girls.  Consequently, we started a group we called “The Circle” which held a weekly study and discussion on the subject of keeping pure and guarding their hearts.  The girls also read Shakespeare together, organized an annual medieval fair complete with horses and jostling, and we made a trip to the Stratford Festival in Canada to see a few fantastic stage productions.

By the early years of the 2000s, the teens in The Circle were finishing their high school years and the young girls who took acting lessons were entering their teens.  Mickey and I were still meeting with those girls, as a 4-H club, when I presented the idea of putting on a play – a play I volunteered to write.  Through the summer I worked on the play that I envisioned would be held during our regular meeting time, or perhaps if it was good enough we would perform it in the evening and invite “the dads”.
 

Fall began and unexpectedly our small 4-H group began to grow, and grow, and grow!  New girls arrived wanting to be involved. I would expand the cast and story of my simple play based on an Elsie Dinsmore story from the 1800s.   The play was about a young heroine being deceived by a gambler who was after her inheritance.   The subject of the play encouraged us to talk to the girls about guarding their hearts and making the commitment to support each other in this regard.
 

Parts were assigned and lines memorized.  Mrs. Walker began instructing the new girls on stage directions, getting into character, and being “louder, please!”  Before long mothers were buying hoop skirts online, searching resale shops for girl’s lace-up boots and sewing fabulous civil war era dresses.  Set pieces began to be planned and built by the fathers.  Trunks and props appeared, and we rented a space in which to perform our play.  We were on our way.  We hired a lighting staff, introduced music to the performance, and planned an intermission with refreshments.  We made a program and brochures about our new group, having now been named by the girls, “The Purity Ring”.   We sent out announcements to the newspapers, hung flyers, were interviewed by the Christian radio station, and  we began selling tickets.
 

On opening night a few “P.R. moms” were standing backstage observing the audience fill the three-hundred seat auditorium. I remember giving each other the look of “this is exciting stuff!”  It was a whirlwind weekend of performances that left mothers and daughters breathless and wanting more.  A year and a half later we produced our second play at Northern Michigan’s locally esteemed Cheboygan Opera House.

We have produced an annual play since 2003.

Julie Peurasaari, Purity Ring Drama Group Director