For more than two decades, there has been a special kind of creative energy growing at the Boothbay Region YMCA.

It has appeared beneath stage lights and behind easels, in dance studios and rehearsal rooms, in the nervous excitement before a first audition and the applause from an audience after a final bow. It has traveled from Boothbay Harbor to national stages, and it has helped generations of young people discover confidence, friendship, discipline and the courage to express themselves.

We know it as Y-Arts.

This summer marks an important moment in the life of one of the Y’s signature programs as longtime Y-Arts Director Emily Mirabile prepares to move on from the YMCA to take on a new role at Lincoln Theater. It is a moment to celebrate Emily’s extraordinary legacy and, at the same time, to begin imagining the program’s evolution together.

Y-Arts began in 1999 with Emily’s mother, Ginny Bishop, who created a program built around the belief that the arts could have a meaningful place within the mission of the YMCA. Emily experienced that vision first as a child herself, growing up in the Y-Arts world. She would eventually become its director, carrying her mother’s work forward and making it her own. Today, Emily’s own children participate in Y-Arts programs.

Few programs get to tell a story spanning three generations of one family. And few people have poured themselves into a program with the energy, creativity and expectation of excellence that Emily has brought to Y-Arts. Under Emily’s leadership, musical theater became an especially powerful part of the program. Hundreds of young people, along with some brave adults from the community, have learned what it means to rehearse, take direction, support an ensemble, conquer nerves and discover abilities they did not know they possessed.

Emily has always believed performers are capable of remarkable things when they are challenged, supported and taken seriously, and the results speak for themselves. For years, Boothbay’s Y-Arts performers have traveled to the Junior Theater Festival to learn, perform and compete alongside theater programs from across the country and beyond. Since 2009, the program has earned consistent national recognition, including awards for Outstanding Performance and Production, as well as distinctions in Acting, Music, Dance and Ensemble Work.

In 2024, Y-Arts received an Outstanding Performance award at the Junior Theater Festival in Atlanta, GA, one of only nine groups among 125 participating troupes to receive that recognition. In 2025, the team traveled to Junior Theater Festival West in Sacramento, CA and returned with awards for Excellence in Music and Outstanding Performance. While the trophies are wonderful, the greater accomplishment is found in the confidence of the young people behind them. It is in the child who once stood quietly at the edge of the room and later stepped onto a stage. It is in friendships made backstage, older students mentoring younger ones, performers learning to recover when something goes wrong, and children discovering that hard work can turn something they imagined into something real. It is bringing adults and children together to create community musicals that warm the heart. That is Emily’s legacy at the Y.

Before Emily takes her final bow as Y-Arts Director, our community has one more opportunity to celebrate the work she loves. Please join in on Thursday, Aug. 27, at 5 p.m. at Lincoln Theater in Damariscotta for one and final Y-Arts summer youth production of Disney’s “Lion King, Jr.” Come cheer for this summer’s young performers and help us fill the theater for Emily’s final production. Tickets can be purchased at the Theater. 

And then, appropriately for a program built on creativity, the Y is asking, “How could Y-Arts Evolve?”  Musical theater, violin and piano lessons, and visual arts will continue, but what else is possible? 

Imagine an adult photography workshop. A community member teaching woodworking. A local artist introducing children to ceramics. Jewelry making. Drawing. Painting. Fiber arts. Dance classes for different ages. Acting, singing, cooking, music and intergenerational workshops where artists who have spent years mastering a craft can pass that knowledge to someone picking it up for the first time. 

Our community is filled with artists, craftspeople, makers, performers, photographers, musicians, and dancers. How can we co-create together? 

You do not need to become a Y employee to make a difference. Perhaps you could teach one workshop. Volunteer for a short series. Help with a production. Share a skill with a group of children or adults. Join a conversation about what arts programming our community would enjoy. Or connect us with someone whose talent could become part of Y-Arts’ future. This next chapter at the Y does not need to be created by one person alone. It can be created by our special and very talented community. 

We are deeply thankful to Emily for the extraordinary chapter she has given Y-Arts, building on the vision her mother began more than 25 years ago. Her leadership, high standards, love of musical theater and devotion to generations of young people have left a lasting mark on this community. Now we have the privilege of asking what comes next. 

Have an idea for the next chapter of Y-Arts? Have a skill you would love to share? We want to hear from you. Contact Lisa McIntosh at lmcintosh@brymca.org and help us imagine what comes next for our special Y-Arts program.