Beta Club By Grace Birkett

Mr. Bishop did many things at DMS, one of those many tasks was sponsoring the DMS BETA club alongside Mr. Godfrey. Mr. Bishop was the embodiment of what BETA club stands for. He was kind, caring, and selfless giving all his time and energy into making the world a better place. He was the definition of leading by example when it came to being an example of a great person. He made an effort to treat everyone with kindness even by simply saying hello. Mr. Bishop wanted to get the club members to understand that we are the people who can make the world a better place by simple acts of kindness. When students in the club where expected to be leaders he did just that. He made the club what it is today. When asked about what it was like to co-sponsor BETA club with Mr. Bishop, Mr. Godfrey said the following, “ Working with Mr. Bishop was an adventure. Many times I found myself unable to keep up with him.  He was so busy and invested in so many things. Matt was so passionate about sharing the responsibility of leading our students, and always tried to give the credit to everyone else but himself.  Working with such a selfless person has helped me to stay grounded and focus on the good in.” These few quotes just just show how truly important Mr. Bishop was to the community, the school, and BETA club.

Bishop’s History with the Fall Play By Tori Flores Cortez

During Mr. Bishop’s time at DMS, he was one of the directors of the annual Fall Plays at DMS. He, among Mrs. Olson, Mr. Parise, and Mrs. Witek participated in the production of the play available to 7th and 8th graders. We interviewed Mr. Parise and Mrs. Olson to share some fond memories they had with Mr. Bishop.

Q: How was working with Mr. Bishop like?

Parise- I really enjoyed working with Mr. Bishop on the Fall Play and stuff. He brought a lot of comedy, you know, to the shows and I think that it was great that we work as a team of multiple different directors and each had different perspectives on what we can do to make the show funny, and he certainly brought a lot of that since the humor and it was always him that choreographed our dance breaks and that was kinda his stamp on the Fall Play. 

Olson- It was the best. Mr. Bishop was someone who anytime that you had an idea, he would say, “How can I help you?”, or he would have another idea that would make it better, and it was a lot of fun to get to work with him. 

Q: What was your favorite memory with Mr. Bishop involving the Fall Play?

Parise- I think my favorite memory was just when we were doing the How to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse play, and him and I came up with the idea doing the godzilla scene of me dressing up as a dinosaur and having kids talk like they were in an old school japanese film like they were dubbed in the language and how that whole scene kinda came together, I think was something I’ll always think about.

Olson- Oh gosh, if I had to pick one, the thing that comes to mind most- so Mr. Bishop is really well known for the choreography, so every play- even if it didn’t make sense for there to be a dance in the middle of it- Bishop always wanted to put a dance in the middle of it and it was always the show’s stopping moment. So he would choose the music, he would do the mashup, he would cut the tracks so that all of the music went together and then he would always do the dance, and every year, it was the biggest moment in the whole thing. So that’s probably my favorite. 

Q: What was your favorite play you’ve ever done with him?

Parise- I’d say probably the Zombie Apocalypse cause that was I think just a lot of- that was my first one that I did, first fall play I helped out with- and just the different creative ideas that Mrs Olson and Mrs Witek and I and Mr Bishop all kinda came up with was just a lot of fun, it was a good show. Not that the others weren’t a good show, it's just that that one was a lot of fun.

Olson- So, my favorite is actually the first fall play he ever did. It’s not a story, I think, many people know but I started the fall play probably, maybe, 15 years ago-ish, and then about 8 years ago, whenever I became a digital learning coach, I wasn’t working at Dundee Middle School anymore. When I became a digital learning coach, first I was working at Hampshire Middle School, and so I tried to find somebody to take over the Fall Play, and lots of people were interested, but it’s a big time commitment, so there wasn’t anyone who had time, and I asked Mr. Bishop, and originally he had said, ”I just don’t have the time, I do so much anyway.” and I said no big deal. And so I actually cancelled the fall play that year, which was really sad, and whenever I left the year before I didn’t know I was gonna be a DLC, so I didn’t know I was gonna have to cancel it, so I made a video for students, and Mrs. Roy and Mr. Bishop played it in chorus, and the students at that time, they basically banded together and 8 students started a google doc and wrote their own script. They wrote like a 60 page script, and then they brought it to Mrs. Roy and Mr. Bishop and said, “Look we’re gonna save the play! We wrote a script!”, which it wasn’t because we didn’t have a script, but I loved that that’s where their brains went. And because Mr. Bishop saw that they had put so much work in, he said, “You know what? We have to make this happen.” And I had told them from the beginning, "If someone else is willing to do it with me, I still will come back every day after my job, I’m just gonna be late to all the rehearsals”, and so that was our first one that we did together and that one was our favorite because it was really special that the students had written the show and then we put on the show that they did. So the name of that show, they called it “Wrong Turn to Fantasy”, so that was the show they put on and that was the show we did that year.

Q: What was the first play you guys did together?

Parise- How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse

Olson- Wrong Turn to Fantasy

Q: Which play was the most complicated one to direct?

Parise- I would say-and I don’t even remember the name- but the year we had, during the COVID years, where we had to, just something about bad first dates, and just the challenges cause we didn’t have an audience. We had to video record things, so it was just a lot of obstacles we had to work through, but we still wanted to give students the opportunity to be in a Fall Play and do things, y'know but obviously theres a difference between when you're doing theatre in front of an audience than when your doing it infront of a camera, like you don't get the laughter and stuff that you normally would if it was a live audience, so I think that was the toughest show, and we couldn’t- we had to space actors, like we couldn’t- actors couldn’t really interact, they had to keep their space so it made it challenging to block how characters interact with each other, so it was just a lot of challenges that we faced.

Olson- So the most complicated was probably I think it would have been in 2021, COVID had just happened, so we still had all these restrictions, and we all were in masks. So in 2021, we wanted to do a show, but we weren’t allowed to have big crowds together yet so we couldn't have an actual show with a live audience, so we did a show called “Check Please”. And it basically is a whole bunch of either, blind dates or first dates that go horribly wrong and are hilarious. But the thing that made it so complicated is we filmed all of it and then broadcasted the show so that people could watch it. Because we did it that way we used green screens and we put students in front of green screens and then put them inside of different restaurants the whole time. So that was a lot of moving pieces to get everything together. The other one that comes to mind, so twice we’ve done the show “Haphazardly Ever After”, and that one was a really fun show, but again lots of moving pieces, but all the moving pieces are what make it so fun and hilarious.

Mr. Bishop has been a big part of the theater part of DMS and has been with us for many years. Being a part of the Fall Play with Mr. Bishop was such a great joy, and we wish to continue to bring the same joy to everyone who participates every year.