This is a facelift times 3,000.”

Aaron Couto, Portsmouth Middle School teacher

PORTSMOUTH — Nearly five years after the Portsmouth High School auditorium was completed upgraded, its little sister to the south is also new and improved.

The “Little Theater” at Portsmouth Middle School (PMS), built in 1971, has brand-new seats, a state-of-the-art sound system, as well as new lighting, curtains, carpeting, and a paint job.

“It needed an upgrade from the faded orange curtain and the yellow seats,” said Dorene Phillips, the PMS music educator who spearheaded the project.

“This is a facelift times 3,000,” added PMS teacher Aaron Couto, a member of the team that made the renovations possible. “This has been such a big process. This is going to be such a new level for us. It’s great.”

Phillips, the district’s 2023 Teacher of the Year, started things rolling last year when she sought a Champlin Foundation grant for a new sound board and speakers.

She was ready to write another grant for more improvements when Deputy Superintendent Elizabeth Viveiros told her the district had some available Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds that could be used to finish the theater upgrades. ESSER funds are federal dollars directed to schools nationwide to help with hardships created by the COVID pandemic.

Besides Phillips, Viveiros, and Couto, the renovation team also included Superintendent Thomas Kenworthy, Facilities Director David Houle, and head custodian Ryan Randall.

The team was under a bit of a time crunch, since the school drama group wanted to stage the musical “Legally Blonde, Jr.” in early April.

“I told them I needed it ready for the show,” Phillips said. “We had the talent show in here, but it wasn’t completely finished. There were some lighting issues we still needed to take care of, but it was good enough to run it for one night.”

One of the biggest expenses was for the new seats, which Highland Seating installed at a cost of just under $121,000. There are about 400 seats in total — one fewer than before to allow for more wheelchair room down front.

“I started getting the quotes over (last summer), and we shut the theater down right after the chorus concert in the second week of December. The third week, they took out all the seats,” said Phillips. “The coolest part about the whole thing was, the person who put in the original seats? His son ended up doing these seats.”

Couto marveled at the silence of the seats. “They don’t make sound when you move them,” he said.

No more problems with sound

Perhaps the most noticeable upgrade is the sound system, which had previously plagued theatrical performances in the theater. 

“The sound system was so poor in here,” Phillips said. “Before, it would crackle. The kids’ mics would keep cutting out and it would drive me insane.”

The theater now boasts a sound board identical to the one in the PHS auditorium, known as the PHS Kate Grana Auditorium after the beloved music teacher, choral director and vocal coached who died in 2016.

“It’s the same exact board, and we have all new speakers. We have the hanging mics; you don’t have to be running cables from up front. Everything is (controlled) by the sound board in the back now,” she said.

Couto said for the first time, no speakers have to be placed on the stage, due to the state-of-the-art sound system. “This soundboard could mix the Dunkin’ Donuts Center if we really needed it to,” he said.

He can also control the sound with an iPad, which makes for good teaching moments, Couto said.

“I’ll be sitting there (in the control booth that looks down upon the theater) in a tech rehearsal, throw my headset on and tell students, ‘Watch what I’m doing right here on the mixer,’ and they can watch the mixer change while I’m still up there talking to them through the headset while a scene is happening,” he said. “So I can explain scenarios like, ‘This mic sounds like this, so I need to change this. You know what I’m saying?’ The kid will say, ‘Yup, I watched exactly what you just did.’”

The theater also has new curtains — front and back — on the stage. Bruno Painting sprayed a new coat on the walls, which feature the original sound panels, giving them a newer look.

The theater was also converted over to LED lighting, to match the rest of the school. The theater is noticeably brighter, and all the lighting is on dimmers. 

Coastal Electric came in to hook up the seat lights, which were not part of the original scope of work and was the last part of the job. The company’s owner, Costa Gianetis, has a daughter who performed in “Legally Blonde, Jr,” Phillips said.

And yes, the “Legally Blonde Jr.” performances went off without a hitch.

If you haven’t gotten a glimpse of the Little Theater yet, the School Committee is holding its Tuesday, May 28 meeting there. The meeting starts at 7 p.m.