Seniors Tyrone Yanaga and Max Schoenbrunner of Boy Scout Troop 234, built a stage in the campus garden over the summer for their Eagle Scout projects. According to chemistry teacher Patrick Wildermuth, around 40 seats will soon be added from the rounds cut from recently felled trees.
The stage is centered in the middle of the garden, near the varsity baseball field. Yanaga focused his project on building the actual stage, while Schoenbrunner is creating the seating area. According to Yanaga, funds for the stage and seating is coming from the ASB and the Parent’s Committee.
Wildermuth has been assisting the scouts with their project since this summer. “Mr. Wildermuth was starting to build up the community garden, and he wanted to be able to teach class out there. He had already cut down redwoods for seats,” Schoenbrunner explained.
Yanaga and Schoenbrunner didn’t do all the work alone. Wildermuth, the Global Student Embassy, and Whole Foods also contributed to the stage-building process. Yanaga said, “Mr. Wildermuth came out day to day and organized a huge GSE work force. Whole Foods also delivered lunch for us.”
English teacher Tina Mayer is excited for the stage in the garden, especially considering the CPAC is closed. Each year her senior class performs Hamlet, and they usually do it in the CPAC. Mayer said, “It’s a pain to do it here in my room. My only concern with doing in outdoors is that it could be rainy. But it’ll be very Shakespearean in an outdoor theater.”
Wildermuth said, “We do classes outside, and we wanted a place to stage the day, have a place for us all to gather, and be able to talk to the class about what we are going to be doing for the day.”
Rose bushes have been placed on each side of the stage. The stage is in the center of the garden, but the seating area will be on the sloping hill.
“We also wanted a place for other classes to go out and be able to enjoy the garden,” Wildermuth added. “Drama can go out. The art classes can go out and draw.”
Yanaga and Shoenbrunner also considered weather conditions that Moraga may experience in the winter. Wildermuth said, “Having a stage instead of just a seating area means that there’s always going to be sort of a dry, not muddy place. We’ll have a dry place to gather and have different classes out there. We really wanted a place that teachers could go out, take their kids, and enjoy what was going on.”
