A Dream Turned Tradition: Patrick Henry High School’s All School Field Trips

Theater experiences create a springboard for discussion, inviting risk-taking and possibility. Project Success has invited students to see theater from the very beginning, when PS began with a workshop in the classroom and show at the Guthrie Theater with 200 students from North High School. Founder and Executive Director Adrienne Diercks worked with Sheila Livingston at the Guthrie in the early years to create a meaningful theater partnership to bring more students to the theater. Now Project Success works with 50+ theater partners each year to provide thousands of opportunities for students and their families to experience the performing arts.

Project Success is built on community, collaboration, and partnerships with our school communities. We partner with teachers in each of our schools to connect their students to meaningful programming that our partners help us provide. As we celebrate 30 years in 2024, one of our partner teachers reached out to us this spring to share about his experience with Project Success at Patrick Henry. See below for a letter from Patrick Pelini, Patrick Henry (soon to be renamed to be Camden High School) English teacher and long-time Project Success partner teacher. Thank you to the Guthrie Theater for your partnership in hosting our 5th all-school field trip for Patrick Henry students and teachers this year!

A letter from Patrick Henry English teacher, Patrick Pelini –

Back in May 2016, a simple meeting with Jason Brown, then Education Program Director at the Guthrie Theater, and Laura Garcia, Senior Director of Programs-Minneapolis at Project Success, was just the beginning of what would become a legendary journey. After several years of successful ninth-grade field trips to see Shakespeare productions at the Guthrie, facilitated by Project Success, we gathered to plan for the upcoming school year. Jason asked me, “If you could do anything, what would it be?” Jokingly, I replied, “Take the whole school on one giant field trip, everyone all together at the same time.” Jason and Laura looked at each other, then at me. “Would you actually do that?” Jason asked. “Yes,” I said. “Could we actually do that?” Jason asked Laura. “Yes,” she said. We all laughed, it was the biggest thing any of us had ever dreamed, let alone considered trying to do.

Before school ended in June, Jason had secured permission for this at the Guthrie, and an extra Student Matinee performance of King Lear just for Patrick Henry High School was added to the next season’s schedule. Laura gave the green light from Project Success, and we were doing this—somewhat in a daze of disbelief, it was so huge and so ambitious.

And we did do it, the next spring we took 800 people—over 700 students and almost 100 staff—to see King Lear on the same day at the same time all on one massive field trip. But first, we prepared: Students in every grade, nine through twelve, read the play beforehand in their English classes. Principal Yusuf Abdullah took the stage before the show to thank our benefactors—the Guthrie, the actors and creatives, and, most of all, Project Success. He said, “This is us, our community. We come to this together to do this together. Let’s get into it.” And we did, it was electric. Actors visited Patrick Henry in the days following and told us, “You were our favorite audience. You knew the story, you cared, you reacted, you even called out appropriately. You gave us energy. We loved performing for you.” It was pure magic, plain and simple. We had done the insane, and it had worked.“

The sheer audacity of this crested and carried us forward. That June, Patrick Henry students spoke at the annual Guthrie donor gala about their King Lear experience. They directly asked donors to support this field trip happening again, and contributions poured in. Patrick Henry was again given its own Student Matinee performance date the following season. In 2018, another 800 of us saw Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, having first studied the script schoolwide. This move from Shakespeare to a contemporary U.S. work was transformative, presciently coming just two years before the events of Summer 2020 in Minneapolis; I look back in awe.

At this point, we were on a roll, this was a thing, and the Guthrie granted us our own Student Matinee date for As You Like It in their 2019 season. Students read the play in English classes in the winter, ahead of our now-annual spring All School Field Trip. “All the world’s a stage” became a slogan and refrain in the school hallways. Once more, 800 of us visited the Forest of Arden, as it was created on the Wurtele Thrust Theater stage, and we “fleet[ed] the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world.”

Then, the world stopped. Covid-19 closed schools on Wednesday, March 18, 2020. We were set to see Twelfth Night on Thursday, March 19, and again had been ready with every student in every grade having studied the text beforehand, but this was not to be. Had we been able to go, the graduating class of 2020 would have attended the All School Field Trip to the Guthrie each of their four years in high school. I still so wish that had happened.

But we are back. Last spring, in May 2023, we studied Hamlet schoolwide and journeyed to Elsinore, 800 students and teachers deep. We contemplated with the Dane, “To be, or not to be,” but we did not question, “To go, or not to go” on the All School Field Trip. We went, and it was our best ever. We learned through social media afterward, that the cast had loved us as an audience, again, because we knew and understood the story, and we were invested, and we responded to the performance as it unfolded, giving added impetus and extra energy to the actors. I cried, and I know many students did too.

None of this happens without Project Success. Not even the idea in 2016 inkles in my mind without Project Success. They are the indispensable link between the school and outside institutions like the Guthrie. Patrick Henry could not work with the Guthrie in the ways that we have without Project Success first bringing us and presenting us; Henry students could not have had the rich experiences they have had, seeing world class live performances bring stories in books to life, without Project Success. It is only because of Project Success that any of the foregoing is even remotely possible or ever occurs. Project Success makes vision reality. Think of the buses it takes for an All School Field Trip, think of the lunches for students transported offsite, think of the numbers of staff on hand overseeing, think of the scheduling and the timetables and the spreadsheets and the many, many unseen, behind the scenes logistics: who does all this?; Project Success does. Their commitment and loyalty to Patrick Henry students is truly unbelievable. Project Success is more than generous, Project Success is beneficent.

I can say proudly that the All School Field Trip has become a true tradition at Patrick Henry, attaining legendary status. This fall, as soon as school started, students and staff asked, “Do we get to go this year?” and, “What is the play?” Patrick Henry citizens identify with the All School Field Trip, it defines us as a community and binds us together. It is a thing we do that marks us and makes us. This year, I proudly answered, “Yes, we do get to go, and the play is Henry V.”

This will be the fifth ever Patrick Henry All School Field Trip, and it will be to see Henry V. As we change our name to Camden Community High School, shedding Patrick Henry, which we must do for all the right reasons, I can think of no more fitting farewell to the name we have had, than for our fifth All School Field Trip to be to see Henry the Fifth. I will raise the rally cry, “Henry Five is Henry Five,” and we will move forward together into the future, Camden and Project Success, still using Shakespeare’s words: “We few, we happy few, we band of PHamily, for they today who shed with their blood with us shall be our PHamily.”  And Project Success has, does, and will, shed their blood with us, and, sharing blood, we all live.

A student at Patrick Henry High School photographed Patrick Pelini in his shirts from the
All School Field Trips as part of their senior art project.