Mary Miller is known as the drama teacher at Boothbay Region High School, but it’s a little more complicated than that. Miller also teaches chorus, Holocaust studies, psychology and a senior seminar. That is all just the beginning of the day. Beyond those subjects, Miller is also responsible for nearly everything for performance-related extracurricular events and also works with Carousel Music Theater.

Miller was born in Rockland and grew up in Lyndonville, Vermont where her father, Walter Hasenfus, taught at Lyndon State University. Hasenfus owned a glassblowing business in Boothbay Harbor, so she and her family started visiting during the summers in 1974, and in 1978, Miller and her family moved to Boothbay Harbor permanently. Miller finished her bachelor’s degree at the University of Maine at Augusta in vocal jazz in 1992 and earned master’s degrees  in choral conducting at the University of Maine in Orono in 1998, school administration at University of New England in 2010, and psychology at Southern New Hampshire University just last year.

“I just do it because I like it,” Miller said of her MA and MS collection. “But I’m not going to get any more. I’m done!”

Miller’s journey to BRHS began with an invitation from former social studies teacher Joyce Sirois to do an extracurricular musical. After putting on the musical, Miller began doing after school chorus as there was no music program at the time. She was hired part-time to teach music history and shortly thereafter added a drama class, upgrading to half-time teaching. Not too long after coming on half-time, she added more drama classes, music classes and after school performance projects, bringing her into BRHS full-time.

Her favorite show the students have put on is the Andrew Lloyd Weber classic “Cats,” which she directed over a decade ago with the help of the late Dominic Garvey. Other favorites Miller mentioned were “Into the Woods,” “South Pacific,” “Guys and Dolls” and “Cinderella,” which was performed earlier this school year.

Even though she has scaled back her work with Carousel Music Theater due to her plethora of responsibilities at the school, Miller said she will be directing the first performance of the season, a yet-to-be-determined small cast musical. Aside from teaching drama, music, psychology, and subject classes as well as administrating after school performances, working with Carousel, starring in cabarets, playing organ for the Southport Church, and spending time with her five grandchildren, it is hard to squeeze anything into her schedule.

“There’s not much time for me,” said Miller laughing, going through the list of commitments barely countable on two hands.

One subject Miller said she has always been fascinated by is the Holocaust, a “niche topic,” as Miller calls it, which has brought her to Poland on more than one occasion. One of these trips, Miller revealed, happened so suddenly – and among a group of teachers from Seattle unfamiliar to Miller – she forgot to exchange American U.S. dollars for Polish złoty and nearly dropped her Starbucks order in the airport when the barista demanded “twelve-thousand.”

Miller also used to go to New York every summer for a theater conference centered around high school teachers who teach drama.

“There are teachers there working outside of New York with budgets of $50,000 for musicals and then there’s – me,” said Miller. “We would see shows, and all the workshops are set around them. I remember when we saw “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” the makeup artist from that came, or the choreographer for this came, or the dance captain from that came. So, you get different aspects from the different shows.”

Part of the conference includes four shows and Miller tries to go early so she can see some more shows on her own time. One year, Miller saw upwards of eight shows in a week. Even though she has not been in recent years, it is something she often thinks about.

However, Miller does take school trips with art teacher Manon Lewis. In years past, they have been to Italy, China, Spain, France and the United Kingdom. There was also a school trip to Scotland and Ireland when the border was opened between Northern Ireland and Ireland. Unfortunately, the last trip she organized for New York fell through, but Miller said they try to make Boston at least once a year for a show and often go to Portland to see the Portland Stage Company or The Public Theatre.

Among Miller’s many interests is gospel and a longing to have more performance centered around the genre in the Boothbay region. Right now, BRHS is in the midst of preparing for the one-acts competition, something Miller said the students love, even the many who have never done anything like it. This year, the one acts will revolve around “Spoon River Anthology,” the 1915 Edgar Lee Masters piéce de résistance of free-verse poetry.

“We’re not modernizing it, but I’m changing it so it will read more like a play rather than individual monologues,” said Miller.

If Miller could do any show in the world, she said she would like to do “Ms. Saigon,” the Vietnam-era adaptation of Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly.”

Said Miller, “I don’t think that’s going to happen!” But for the drama teaching, chorus conducting, cabaret dancing grandmother of five who seems to be able to do it all, never say never.