At what was, arguably, the busiest time in their lives to date, Brenna Hansen and Eve Letendre took on an unprecedented responsibility. Just 16 years old, going into their junior year at Wachusett Regional High School, they took over the middle school theater program. It wasn’t a dream of theirs, but a necessity, when the director retired and no adult volunteered to run the program.
People who had long loved and supported the theater program at Central Tree Middle School had resigned themselves to the sad reality that, come the 2025-26 school year, it would cease to exist. Brenna and Eve couldn’t believe it. After all, this was the program that, as middle school students themselves, had cemented their friendship. It gave them a love of the arts and built their confidence, social skills, and creativity. They could not let it die.
In May 2025, they asked CTMS Principal David Cornacchioli if he would allow them to assume the director’s role. “Mr. C,” as he’s known to students, explained that he had to give the search more time to see if an adult might step up. The girls waited. Two months later, they approached him again. “They had a scripted pitch,” he recalls. “It blew me away. And what really blew me away was their passion and their commitment to wanting to keep our theater program going.”…