Students and adults filling the Newtown High School lobby Saturday, July 11, were dressed as if for a Halloween party. However, the nerds, construction crews, minions, cowboys, and others were costumed to show their team’s spirit for a community “spelling bee,” put on stage by NewArts, a division of the 12.14 Foundation.

The event was not a competition, but instead an evening of fun that doubled as a fundraiser.

Hosting that evening were the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee creators Rebecca Feldman and Jay Reiss, who worked with NewArts Artistic Director Michael Unger on the original production of the play that earned six 2005 Tony Award nominations.

Ms Feldman and Mr Reiss were happy — and able — to host the special event for Mr Unger, they said, as they were in New York celebrating the ten-year anniversary of the musical's Broadway debut; Mr Reiss was a member of the original cast.

Funds raised through sponsors supporting the teams Saturday will be used to offset expenses related to upcoming summer productions. Liberty Smith, a musical, will be performed July 31-August 2, and then The Lion King Jr will be offered the following weekend, August 6-9.

All performances, featuring regional young adult actors, will be at Newtown High School.

The Saturday night bee found participants onstage acting out a comedy skit, but before entering the theater, spelling bee teams made last-minute adjustments to their costumes. Dressed as minions were Kristin Raamot Dunn, Lara Wheat, Reese Wheat, Charlin Dunn, Jennifer Renkert, Marty Dunn, and Maya Renkert. Ms Renkert was the group's “speller,” the team decided.

With the smell of fresh paint clinging to their cardboard handmade excavation machines, which were part of the Construction Junction team costumes, were Ashleigh Shaw, Matt DiCristina, Stef Carr, Alyssa and Kaitlyn Crumb. Stepping around those costumes’ big buckets and wheels was Nerd team member CJ Hoekenga. With feathers in their hair, Sophia and Sarah Baroody strutted by.

Dipthongs team members crowded around one another as they laughed, took pictures, and anticipated the fun about to begin as the theater doors opened. Members of that team were Katherine Wolff, Joseph DeVellis, Jonathan Sweeney, Eliza Roth, Lindsey DieVert, Nicole Kolitsas, Lauren Barrett, and Jane Shearan. Eliza soon took another picture with friend Olivia Deschenes, who wore a curly wig.

Young Trey Hoekenga posed with young ladies Paige Farley, Kayla Verga, and Jane Shearin.

As theater doors swung open, a stream of excited faces rushed through. Dressed in his cowboy costume and tossing his hand out in a peace sign gesture was Michael Spanedda, who quickly joined the queue hurrying down the theater’s center isle.

Mr Unger stepped up to a microphone set center stage and introduced the evening’s guests and spelling bee participants. Spellers were encouraged to ask for a word’s definition, its use in a sentence, and were able to ask their team members for help in spelling naughty, giblet, vacuum, empanada, webinar, forsythia, appletini, and others.

Going into the event, Ms Feldman told The Newtown Bee, she was a bit nervous, because while she and Mr Reiss had done these events before, they were always working with adults, not a younger group of participants like the Newtown fundraiser drew.

“When we found out the majority of spellers were primarily kids, we had to do some quick adjustments because so many of the words we were previously using we much more challenging — with related adult-oriented humor,” Ms Feldman said. “So we pulled together a few new ideas together in anticipation of having mostly younger spellers.”

But when those young spellers came to the microphone, it was Ms Feldman who was taken by surprise.

“When we started giving these kids the adult words, I was floored by how good they were — I mean, adults have trouble with some of these words!”

Even in the later rounds of the bee, Ms Feldman saw the young spellers calling for help from college-age assistants versus from their parents or other adults.

As a result of their Newtown experience, Ms Feldman said she and her partner will be more open to having younger spellers, especially if they have well-networked adults assisting with getting pledges.

She said the whole idea for hosting fundraising spelling bees resulted from the success of their musical.

“People started asking us to do it,” she said. “It was borne from schools and others needing a fresh new kind of fundraising activity.”

The local spelling bee was the culmination of an incredible week for Ms Feldman and Mr Reiss, she said, coming off a one-time revival of their show, which reunited the entire original cast onstage in New York.

“For me it was the best version of the show, ever,” she said. “It was magical — there was so much excitement in the room, and everyone felt extremely touched. I got to bring my 7-year-old daughter, who knew about the show because we have posters all over the house.

“But to have her see it live, with this cast including her dad was very special,” Ms Feldman added. “To start the week with our reunion and end up helping this cause in Newtown was just fantastic.”

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a long one-act musical comedy conceived by Ms Feldman with music and lyrics by William Finn, book by Rachel Sheinkin, and additional material by Mr Reiss, according to Wikipedia.com.

The 2005 Broadway production earned good reviews and box office success and was nominated for six Tony Awards, winning two, including Best Book for a Musical.

The musical was workshopped and developed at the Barrington Stage Company (BSC) in Massachusetts, where the script was fleshed out and the show was given a fuller production in July 2004, directed by Ms Feldman and Mr Unger, who has been involved with The 12.14 Foundation musicals since its formation in 2013.