Beloved Drama Director Says Goodbye to Pelham Memorial High School

After 32 years, 64 plays and nearly 70 “To Kill A Mockingbird” lessons, Pelham’s John Orefice has packed up his books and stage equipment and headed off to retirement.

While it’s difficult to imagine a Pelham Memorial High School without one its  pedagogical mainstays, Orefice said that he was “terrified” when he first started teaching here. An impassioned actor since his youth, this Tuckahoe-native was ready to take hold of the drama department in 1979—which he proved to redefine—but was anxious about teaching English, a subject he ranked below law and politics.

“I was coming at the study of English from the point of view of a ‘B’ student. I was terrified,” Orefice said of his early days at PMHS.

But, it didn’t take long for Orefice to appreciate just how interconnected drama and literature are. While standing in front of his English students, Orefice morphed into the thespian engaging a tough crowd, and while in the auditorium, he served as the wordsmith, impressing the beauty of the script and its imagery upon his cast.

“I was really very successful because I looked at it as an artist, as a theater director would,” Orefice said of his approach to teaching English. “What can I do for this audience? What can I make this audience care about?”

To unpackage the dense Les Miserables and Odyssey themes that can easily inundate a 9^th grader, the Colby College graduate tried to make the experience a relatable one. He would break out into song, or take the students outside to deliberate the fleeting nature of a cherry blossom tree. Orefice recreated his students’ penchant for texting, by encouraging workshopping in class.

“Texting is the impulse to make your idea somebody else’s,” Orefice explained.

Oftentimes, he just flat out asked what students were thinking about

“I would always leave time for discussions of their world,” Orefice said of the Friday conversations that were slated to last 10 minutes, but often melted into 30. “I would ask ,‘What are you doing this weekend,’ to get them out of the world of the cell phone and into my world.”

While Orefice always considered his English lessons plans a concerted “work in progress,” he said that the drama department, for which he directed 64 plays, evolved in an almost organic way.

“It’s not me, it’s the art,” Orefice said of what inspired and fomented his drama students. “I’m able to give them a chance to do stuff.”

While Orefice wouldn’t take credit for a department that has developed something of a reputation around Westchester, Principal Jeannine Clark was quick to attribute its success to him.

“He was it,” Clark remarked, emphasizing how the theater program and Orefice are simply inextricable.

But, it wasn’t just his teaching techniques that impressed Clark. She appreciated the way he immersed himself in every aspect of the drama process, even going so far as to the lumberyard to get the necessary set materials.

In addition to giving students the chance to act in the classics—“West Side Story” and “A Chorus Line,” he also gave them ownership of their work by introducing them to Young Playwrights. The program gives teens the chance to write, produce and perform their own plays.

“I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything,” said recent PMHS graduate Megan Wines on working with Orefice.

While Orefice has some ideas for how he’d like to spend his retirement—fixing up his house in Pelham, maybe opening a hot dog stand—he said he’ll remain involved in the school. Orefice is already devising ways to raise money for the arts through an alumni production.

Though Orefice calls the eight-year period when he directed a slew of “mindboggling” classics such as, “Les Miserables” and “West Side Story,” his golden age here, he decided to go with a tough, offbeat show for his finale in March.

Perhaps in choosing “,” a challenging show that speaks to “vision and dreams and the future,” according to Orefice, he hoped to show his students what they’re capable of, and the kinds of risks he hopes for them to take, even when he's gone.