Spelling Bee a S-U-C-C-E-S-S!

Pictured: With Jay Reiss and Rebecca Feldman and Michael Unger with winners Jane Shearin and Ava Baroody

and (photos 3-10) Spelling Bee teams including Minions, Grease is the Word, Newtown Nerds, Pointless Peeps, Construction Junction Function, Taunton Stingers, The Diphthongs, and Spontaneous Spellers All photo by NewArts (1214 Foundation)

On Saturday, July 11 NewArts had a real spelling bee – but with spellers of all ages. Imagine a Walk-A-Thon, where people sponsor other people, but in this case it was for spelling. And yes, cheating was allowed. Sponsors donated to support their chosen team.

Rebecca Feldman, the creator of the original 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and the co-director on the world premiere production, was on hand for the fun. Jay Reiss, who played the original word pronouncer, Panch, and also wrote additional material also attended the event held at Newtown High School.

The more money teams raised ahead of time through their team members and sponsors, the more cheats they were able to buy and the longer they stayed in the game. Cheats included things like: Ask your team, Ask the audience, Phone a friend, Buy a letter, Buy a different word, Get back in the game after you’ve been kicked out and Roll the big fuzzy dice to try your luck.

The team leader was the one up on stage as the speller. Teams were encouraged to be as silly as possible, dress in costumes and come up with a name for themselves. Check the photos to see the creative costumes and the team names.

The team with the most creative costumes got 5 free tickets to any of NewArts’ summer shows. The team with the most team spirit earned 10 free tickets to any of the summer shows and the team that raised the most money got 15 free tickets to any of the summer shows.

Tickets for the two NewArts summer shows ’Liberty Smith’ and ’The Lion King, Jr.’ are on sale now at http://www.1214foundation.org/