Harriet Worrell inspired students to soar to new heights, on and off stage
Harriet Worrell, the longtime director of the Yoh Theatre Players at Woodstock Union High School, had a profound impact on many students’ lives during her career. She recently passed away at age 78. (Photo Provided)
When Harriet Worrell directed her theater students, she wasn’t just building the next production, she was continuing to build a family of leaders, touching young hearts by showing them all they were capable of — even if they didn’t believe it at first.
Worrell passed away on March 16 at age 78, surrounded by family at her home in Bridgewater Corners. For 28 years, as the director of the Yoh Theatre Players at Woodstock Union High School, she impacted generations of young people who went into various professions. Whenever Harriet Worrell directed a group of theater students, she taught them lessons about work ethic that extended far beyond the stage.
At her March 21 memorial service, Yoh Theatre alumni, their families and the wider community filled the theater auditorium, with Worrell’s director’s table in front of the first row, facing the stage, as it always had for many years.
One of speakers at the memorial, Sophie Shackleton, was part of the Yoh Theatre program throughout middle and high school in Woodstock. She attributed many of her accomplishments to what she learned from Worrell. That work ethic and passion for the arts led Shackleton to a Master's Degree in London, and she is now working for world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, producing events with artists and scientists all over the world.
“I tell you this not to list my accomplishments, but to begin to tell her [Mrs. Worrell] and to tell you, the way she has fundamentally shaped my life, and I am not the only one. I know that every single one of her students feels the same way,” Shackleton said. “We are now teachers, technical consultants, doctoral candidates, digital producers, managers, nurses, librarians, business owners and parents. We have arrived where we are, because of who we are, but also because she taught us the art of being us. She gave us the keys to our universe, and told us to take it seriously. Mrs. Worrell, you gave us the greatest gift one could give: our future.”
Jordan Larson was also in the Yoh Theatre program, and he played football for Worrell’s late husband, Chuck, who was a longtime football coach in Woodstock and passed away last year. Reflecting on his Yoh experience, Larson told the audience he felt blessed to have so many great brothers and sisters.
“I hope you found your voice, like I found mine,” he said.
Worrell’s daughter, Perrin, brought that Yoh Theatre energy by leading the audience in the “Yoh cheer”. And she knows it well, having spent her whole middle and high school career in the Yoh Theatre program, as well as helping out when she was back on college breaks.
In an interview later that week, Perrin Worrell said that by making high demands on her students, she ingrained that style of leadership in them, and she and others have taken that out into the world. It’s a style that pushes against limits and doesn’t stop at boundaries that norms have laid out.
“She bred leaders out of her program, because these kids went on to be the ones who were outspoken and be the ones that were challenging the status quo,” Perrin said. “She would always tell us to challenge the thought, don’t take it at face value.”
Harriet Worrell helped many students find their voice, their inner confidence, and therefore their path in life. But Worrell’s path started far away from Vermont, in San Antonio, Texas, where she was born into a family deeply involved in the arts. In fact, her father, Leonard Ramsey Yelvington, was a well-known Texas playwright and a theater named after the family was built at Southwest Texas State College (now Texas State University).
As a young educator and mother in Texas, Worrell became very active as a high school theater director, community member, and eventually rose to the level of judging plays at competitions. Meg Scherbatskoy, Worrell’s eldest daughter, recalled the fast-paced lifestyle, between theaters, competitions, and travel.
“Mother’s art was hers, she was creative, and she had stamina beyond belief,” Scherbatskoy said.
But she noted community was very important to her mom. She would meet Chuck Worrell while still in Texas, and they would move their young family to the Green Mountains. Having a theater community was such a big part of her mom’s life, Scherbatskoy said.
“She’d lost the one in Texas long ago; she found it again here,” Scherbatskoy remembered.
Worrell’s son Ramsey, who coaches football at Woodstock Union High School, remembered theater as being a part of life growing up, and the way his mother strove for excellence left a strong impact. In an interview, Ramsey noted that, for Harriet, she never set out to create a high school play; she was looking to make theater of the very best quality. Part of the result was multiple trips for the Yoh Players to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival — a world-famous event you don’t just waltz into.
“She took it to the heights she took it to because she demanded it, and she knew the kids were capable of it,” Ramsey said.
The last part of that quote speaks to a lesson from his mother Ramsey employs as a football coach: seeing the potential in young people, and urging them to strive for it.
“If you take a group of kids and push them all to that level, then you end up with the kinds of performances, the kinds of kids, she ended up with,” he said.
And, Ramsey said, she loved them like family, the way Ramsey cares about his players as well. “You genuinely care about them to the level of love,” he said. “She never asked any student to dedicate themselves, anymore she would ask me, Deacon, Temple, Perrin, or Meg to. She loved them the same as she loved us.”
Harriet Worrell led the wedding ceremony of Brooke and Toph Brown, shown here, in 2017. (Photo Provided)
For Toph Brown, Worrell wasn’t only his theater director — she led his wedding ceremony in 2017. Brown, a 2005 Woodstock Union High School graduate and Yoh Master, said how honored he and his wife, Brooke, were to have Harriet lead such a profound, meaningful moment in their lives, a celebration of who they were. As Brown put it, Worrell was like a mother to him.
“So much of who I am I owe to Harriet, not just obvious things like interest in the arts and in theater and some of the performative skills, but also things like an interest in words, and a respect for being able to express yourself clearly, and teamwork and commitment and dedication to something,” he said in a recent interview. “These are all things she taught me, and that she taught us. That was all just present in that moment when we were getting married.”
Worrell also chose challenging material, including Ionesco, Beckett, and some Shakespeare plays many people didn’t know about. By going far outside the “norm” of high school theater, she taught the students to rise to the next challenge. For his senior project as a Yoh Master, at age 16, he memorized 40 pages of an Old-English script for a one-act play called “Everyman”.
Brown said that’s part of the respect she treated her students with, that she treated them as adults, with their own unique ability to achieve great things.
“That is part of being a parent, treating your kids with respect,” Brown said. “She was never patronizing to us, ever, ever, ever. She was seeing that potential in all of us. That’s a wonderful gift she had, something I aspire to, being able to see someone’s potential, seeing through the fog that a child puts up, of ‘I can’t, I’m not good enough, I’ve never tried it.’”
Through the many lessons they impart, people like Worrell keep on teaching us, even after they leave this world, he noted.
“I’ll be learning from this woman the rest of my life,” Brown said.
That gift for courageously seeing potential came through in how Worrell worked and taught, as Rev. Gwen Groff shared in the eulogy at the recent memorial service.
“She chose scripts fearlessly, she taught young people fearlessly,” Groff said. “Taking students to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, and to theater contests all across the country, was fearless.”
At the service, Brown was one of a group of Yoh alumni who joined together for a Speakchorus, an art form Worrell taught to her students, truly a chorus of the spoken word. Sophie Shackleton conducted it at Worrell’s memorial; it was titled “The Art of Me,” written by Worrell herself.
During Shackleton’s remarks before the Speakchorus, she said, “I am still learning, but I say this to all of us: This is officially the end of rehearsal. We are the grown-ups, and we are the children she believed in. When this service ends, go back to your family, your children, your community, your job, your region, your planet, your universe. Take her with you. All the world a stage. All God’s children have a place. Dare to disturb, try again, fail again, fail better, make art, make love, make poetry, make humans, make humanity, make magic. It is essential, and we will do it together.”
— Gareth Henderson
