Ruthie Scarpino ‘04 “It’s okay to not know where you’re going,” said Scarpino. “I wanted to be a good person; I wanted to be an artist. Hebron taught me how to advocate for myself, the value of a voice to create change, and the knowledge that I was of value.” Ruthie Scarpino doesn’t believe in a direct path between point A and point B. In fact, she doesn’t care about destinations at all. She cares about people. Her Fulbright experience in Malaysia five years ago was just one stop along her journey of achieving humanity. She actually cringes when she thinks of linear steps and prefers to see life experiences coming full circle. “Success is not about Fulbright. In fact, recognition in and of itself is not synonymous with success.” Scarpino remembers struggling to get through Hebron Academy because of math classes. She remains forever grateful to math faculty Merry Shore, Ruthie’s “comedic Kathy Gerrits-Leyden, and Heather head shot” Ferrenbach. Ironically, she developed a trash-fashion program designed to teach algebra and geometry for a nonprofit organization in Brownsville, a neighborhood of Brooklyn. Currently, she works with The Creative Arts Team at City University and uses Applied Theater to support literacy. “These are first language English speakers who grew up in New York and can’t read.” Besides the patient math faculty at Hebron, theater and art also got Ruthie through high school. Her passion for theater, and social justice took Scarpino to Ireland, England, Germany, Ecuador, Malaysia, Harlem, and now Brooklyn. Scarpino believes that learning is about advocating for yourself and others and carving out an identity. She also believes that the best way to learn is through art and self-expression.
Scarpino credits Dr. Larch Fidler, former English faculty, and Julie Middleton, drama director, for helping her begin her journey along her self-created path. With encouragement from Dr. Fidler, Ruthie attended Antioch College, graduating in 2008. Her studies and passions eventually led to her 2009 Fulbright grant teaching and researching in Malaysia. But she had found her way around the world before then – first teaching gypsy families in Ireland how to read, then working with the mentally and physically disabled in England, and finally supporting radical nuns in Ecuador who believed that girls deserved an equal right to an education. “I was passionate about the work I was doing,” Ruthie says. “I was shocked by the symbiosis between performance and education and realized that Applied Theater created an avenue to do performance work that was not about me. We forget that there are people who can’t read and write. It’s amazing to watch someone start to value their own ideas and discover that they’re an intelligent human being.” After Malaysia, Scarpino moved to Brooklyn and hired on with The Harlem Children’s Zone. She earned a master’s degree from The Rhode Island School of Design. She sees a very real possibility of returning to Maine to continue work with literacy, art, and performance in rural communities. “As a kid, you doubt the power of yourself,” Ruthie says. “Then you find Hebron, a place where kids are reinforced constantly with that power of self. There’s no path that doesn’t end in some beacon of success if you define success as being a humanitarian.”
When Ruthie isn’t pouring out her passion in classrooms throughout New York City, she continues to find performing outlets for herself. In 2011, she joined her first off Broadway theater company. She continues to perform professionally and currently focuses on contemporary circus and physical theater. “I’ve always been a theater kid,” Ruthie, who played Rizzo in Grease her senior year, explained. “Ever since I was little I’ve always been a performer. But when you realize that performance can be about more than personal gratification, when you see young people directing and having the freedom to break and make their own rules, you realize how much possibility lies in the power of devising.” 12 •
hebron • SPRING 2015
Ruthie wearing one of her “Trash Fashion” ensembles with one of her students