BIDDEFORD – A children’s theater group, created three years ago with a goal of helping young people build their self-esteem, is in danger of shutting down, the owner says.

Ronda Verges, who runs the Academy of Developing Artists of Maine, said she’s about three months behind on rent, which is $2,258 a month. She’s been applying for grants and trying to negotiate a payment plan with the landlord, she said.

Additional Photos

Ronda Verges directs kids at the Academy of Developing Artists in Biddeford, which she founded in memory of her son, who died in 2005. John Patriquin/Staff Photographer

Now she hopes to raise at least $7,000 at a bowl-a-thon being held Saturday at Vacationland Bowling in Saco.

“I want to provide them with a place” to be themselves, Verges said of the students.

There are about 60 children enrolled at the Academy of Developing Artists during the school year, but that number swells to about 200 during the summer camp season, she said.

Verges, a substitute elementary school teacher and part-time nurse, runs the academy with the help of five adult volunteers.

Students pay $40 a month to participate, but that “isn’t enough to pay the bills,” Verges said.

She runs it on a shoestring, relying on donations and frugal trips to Goodwill and thrift shops to get costume and set materials.

Robert Petit, the drama club instructor at Biddeford Intermediate School, is one of the academy’s volunteers. He said he has referred a number of students to the theater group, particularly after budget cuts slashed funding next year for the school drama club.

Students, he said, need another outlet to pursue performance arts.

“It would be scary to think they might lose a place where they feel truly comfortable,” said his wife, Sally Petit, who also volunteers at the academy.

Verges founded the academy in memory of her son, Adam Duane Sabins, who died in 2005 at the age of 18 of injuries from a car accident.

He had been bullied because of his size, his battle with an illness that caused hair loss and his nonconfrontational demeanor.

It was one of his dying wishes, she writes on the theater group’s website, that she open her own academy and help children build up their self-esteem.

On Friday, with the set from a recent production of “Alice in Wonderland” still on stage, a dozen students discussed what the theater group means to them.

“Everyone here is unique,” said 16-year-old Bri Ryan, which is why she feels comfortable just being herself.

“It makes me feel like there is a place for people to come together. When we come together, we aren’t different,” she said.

Around her, other students chimed in as they sat on the stage, flanked by red velvet curtains and lit by professional stage lighting.

Most of them said they have been bullied at some point, whether it was because of the way they look or talk, or because they identify as gay or lesbian.

The Academy of Developing Artists, which is like a second home, is a safe place for them. Spending time there, in practice and performing for audiences of up to 100 people, has boosted their confidence and changed how they behave outside the theater, they said.

Alexis Tibbetts, an 11-year-old from Lyman, said she struggles with attention-deficit (hyperactivity) disorder and Tourette’s syndrome.

People have made fun of her for her facial tics or overactive behavior, she said. But at the academy, cast as Sleepy the dwarf, she realized she could control herself and move slowly.

That, Tibbetts said, has helped her cope in the outside world.

Without acting, and the Academy of Developing Artists, she said, “I would be a mess.”

Staff Writer Emma Bouthillette can be contacted at 791-6325 or at:

ebouthillette@pressherald.com