New Southeast theater to celebrate life of Dorsey Howley
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By MARGARET REIST / Lincoln Journal Star
Chris Cartmill knows this much: the play taking shape in his head will be about possibilities.
When the last construction crew picks up its tools and Lincoln Southeast High School’s renovated performing arts theater welcomes its first audience, the actors on stage will tell a story of passion and inspiration, a tale of beginnings and the lure of the stage.
The play, being written by the LSE graduate-turned New York City playwright, will not focus on tragedy or loss, burning buildings, exploding jets or death.
This work will be about life, the kind inspired by someone who knew how to live it.
By a woman named Jennifer Dorsey-Howley , a Southeast graduate who died five years ago today when terrorists flew passenger jets into the World Trade Center.
Cartmill’s play will be about beginnings, not endings. It is being inspired by how Dorsey-Howley lived, how she loved the lights and the stage and the way singing can fill a person.
“That’s what I wanted to capture,” said Cartmill. “A moment — of all the possibilities and hope that exist in that moment of everybody singing.”
The new theater, which is scheduled to be completed in October of 2008 as part of a school-wide renovation now under way at Southeast, will be named the Jennifer L. Dorsey-Howley Performing Arts Center in honor of the 1985 graduate. When the terrorists struck, Dorsey-Howley , 34, was a director at Aon, an insurance and risk management firm with offices in the south tower of the World Trade Center. She was pregnant with her first child at the time.
After her death, her husband pledged $100,000 and the family planned to raise $400,000 to supplement a theater renovation planned by the district.
In addition to the theater, the district is renovating and updating the entire school as part of a project paid for with a $250 million bond passed by voters.
The family’s fundraising efforts will enhance those improvements paid for by Lincoln Public Schools, allowing the school to have a more state-of-the-art theater.
Officials are now considering using the donations to buy a mechanical computerized rigging system instead of a manual system, said Southeast Principal Pat Hunter-Pirtle.
“That’s a place where we can
take that money and really make it partial to this auditorium and a tribute to her,” he said.
So far, donations total about $213,000, more than double the family’s initial goal.
That doesn’t surprise Jennifer’s brother, Matt Dorsey, who lives in Lincoln.
“The people in Lincoln are great,” he said.
Every year the family holds a golf tournament to raise money. The first three years, it was in New York, the last three in Lincoln.
In August, the tournament raised nearly $10,000.
And in New York, where Jennifer’s husband, Brian Howley, lives, fundraising efforts recently brought in another $25,000.
“It’s just pretty exciting,” said Hunter-Pirtle.
Throughout the renovation process, architects and designers have talked with family members, to see what they like and what they don’t, to ensure the theater design it is a fitting tribute, Matt Dorsey said.
Those plans include an entrance that will be the centerpiece of the renovation.
“The vision is phenomenal,” said Jennifer’s brother. “It’s beautiful. I’m extremely happy. Words can’t even express it.”
With the theater’s design envisioned, it seemed fitting to call on someone who has made words and the stage his livelihood, someone who got his start on the same stage where Dorsey-Howley performed.
Cartmill, who has debuted other works at his alma mater and is currently working on a project with the Lied Center for the Performing Arts, has met with Matt Dorsey and Brian Howley.
Cartmill said he understands the family’s determination to focus on Dorsey-Howley ’s life, not her death.
Cartmill didn’t lose anyone in the attacks, but he lived close by and still has trouble facing what happened that day. When he talked to Dorsey-Howley ’s family, he knew her death wasn’t really the story.
“It didn’t seem to embody who she was. To talk about this, to talk about the end. Why not go back to the start for all of us. … since that’s what this building will be — not a shrine to her, (but) a celebration of all of us that she can represent.”
And so the play is about a place where so many people found their voices.
The high school stage.
That’s where Cartmill discovered a love that would become his life’s work. It’s where Jennifer Dorsey-Howley found a passion, singing in several groups, including Court Choir, Queens Court and Ars Nova Coro.
“My job is not to tell her story,” he said. “My job is to really celebrate … what she loved.”
And so he is writing a play called “The Choir,” about a high school choir, the personalities and the drama of a group of people brought together by a common passion.
It will be a play filled with music. He has an image that he wants to be a part of it and he hopes — though he’s not there yet — it will be a single voice, a person standing on the stage.
A character named Jennifer.
Reach Margaret Reist at 473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com.
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