Her love of theater and performance began when she was just a child, when she and her sister and brother would put together puppet shows and small skits for family and friends.
And though Laura DiPillo became more interested in backstage and production work when she was older, she found the overall attraction of theater even more compelling: It was a place not just for telling rich stories, but one where people from all walks of life could find acceptance and value, whatever their differences.
It’s in that spirit that a new nonprofit group, the Scarlet Sock Foundation (SSF), has formed to carry on Laura’s interest in theater and her concern for other people. The Northampton teen died in 2014 at age 15.
“She would have turned 20 this week,” her mother, Margaret Russo, said during an interview in mid March.
But Russo and the other organizers of the Scarlet Sock Foundation — Heidi Haas, Leah Visconti (Laura’s older sister), Emily Ditkovski, Kelsey Flynn — say they hope their new nonprofit group will go a long way toward honoring Laura’s legacy. The group’s goal is to help children and young adults who don’t typically have access to theater get that access — through acting lessons, involvement with theater groups and possibly school drama programs.
In particular, organizers say they want to fund “social justice theater” involving young people. That’s a broad term that, as one example, encompasses plays focused on people who don’t normally have much visibility on the stage, such as members of the LGBTQ community, or theater presentations that take place in poorer, disadvantaged communities and schools.
“A teacher could come to us and say “I want to start an improv group at my school, maybe one that would go into other schools to do skits on social justice,’ ” said Russo. “That’s the kind of thing we’d be interested in funding.”
Emily Ditkovski, who directs the theater program at the Williston Northampton School in Easthampton, has considerable background in this kind of work. She previously taught theater to teens in grades 7-12 in some low-income sections of New York City, and at Williston she also teaches acting, directing, social justice theater and improvisation.
As Ditkovski sees it, theater not only offers young people in marginalized communities a forum for expressing themselves creatively, it gives them more of an incentive to stay in school. She points to studies by the nonprofit group Americans For the Arts that say the arts as a whole strengthen social ties in communities, generate more money for local businesses and help students’ academic performance, among other things.
With social justice theater, she added, “You create a space for bringing light to stories that otherwise might not get told, and you make people participating in it feel special — feel valued.”
Ditkovski taught Laura DiPillo for part of the time she attended the Williston Northampton Middle School, from 2010 to 2013, and she remembers the teen not just as a talented, committed theater devotee and leader — she says Laura was the stage manager of a Shakespeare play at Williston in 8th grade — but as a confidence booster and sounding board for many other students.
“She just had such a way with other kids, such empathy, a willingness to listen to them and help them,” said Ditkovski. “And she loved theater in her bones — that’s something you can’t teach.”
Russo says SSF is still formulating its plans — the group held its first event, at Gateway City Arts in Holyoke, in early March to introduce potential donors to its mission — and has yet to determine exactly how it will fund applicants, or how much money will be allocated. The five founding members will collectively review requests for money.
“We don’t know yet how much money we’ll give out, and we don’t know how much people will ask for,” said Russo, who did note that donors at the Gateway event were “very generous” and have given or pledged “several thousand dollars” so far. “Our hope is that we’ll grow over time and establish basic criteria [for funding], maybe set up some kind of endowment.”
Haas, a clinical social worker who specializes in child and and family practice, likens SSF to the Northampton Education Foundation, the nonprofit group that helps fund a variety of education projects, particularly ones initiated by teachers who want to do something beyond the standard curriculum.
“In our case, we could help teachers who want to do a special theater project with their students, or who want to start a new drama group in the school,” said Haas, who has led or initiated a number of theater projects in the Northampton school system, such as coaching an improv troupe at the high school.
Flynn, who first met Laura DiPillo through Paintbox Theatre — Laura was a big fan of the Valley family theater program, which Flynn has been part of for years — says SSF is also interested in funding specific theater groups that offer plays dovetailing with the group’s mission. She points to Real Live Theatre, a Northampton ensemble that has focused on community-based stories and underrepresented voices.
For instance, last December the company staged “When We Last Flew,” by African-American playwright Harrison David Rivers, which looks at LGBTQ issues through the lens of small-town America; the production was directed by two women from Holyoke and Springfield, respectively, and the cast included young people from Holyoke, Springfield, Amherst and Northampton.
“If a group like Real Live Theatre has a project where maybe they’ve done some initial readings and now they want to go to the next step, that’s something we can help them with,” said Flynn.
Russo says SSF will be open to funding requests from all of western Massachusetts; the group already has connections to people in theater in both Hampshire and Hampden counties, such as Enchanted Circle Theater in Holyoke. Members are also interested in funding the work of women playwrights, who they say have been historically underrepresented in the field.
Above all, they want their work to embody the spirit and energy of Laura DiPillo and her commitment to helping other people — in and out of theater — especially those who felt they didn’t quite fit in, or were questioning their sexuality.
In fact, the Scarlet Sock Foundation has drawn its name from some remarks from Laura’s memorial service in 2014: Her sister and brother compared Laura to a red sock that ends up in a load of white laundry and turns everything pink.
“The thing that stood out the most about her was the way she cultivated friendships,” said Russo.
Flynn remembers how Laura, who worked as an intern one summer at Paintbox Theatre, would come up to the stage after performances with other children when she was younger to meet the actors and maybe get an autograph. But “Laura’s twist,” Flynn added, “was that she started showing up with things to give us — ‘Here’s a picture that I made for you’ — that just made you feel special.
“That was my first experience of Laura, that generosity, that sense of ‘What can I do?’” she said. “That‘s remarkable for anyone at any age, but she was only 6 or 7.”
Ditkovski notes that Laura left a lasting impression on all the people she knew and worked with in the theater department at Williston Northampton, both through her passion for theater and her efforts to make others in the program feel welcome.
“Theater has always been a home for people who feel left out,” she said. “Laura really embodied that idea.”
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.
More information on the Scarlet Sock Foundation can be found at scarletsock.org.