AUBURN – Overloaded cardboard boxes sat with paint buckets, sheets of plywood, a set of footlights and a briefcase labeled “Prof. H. Hill.”

The haphazard heaps of old theatrical props – the remnants of dozens of plays and musicals – reached 5 feet high in places. Gretchen Stearns peeked into the room and gasped.

“I can’t see anything,” said Stearns, vice president of the Edward Little High School Drama Club. “I don’t even know what’s there.”

Stearns’ teacher, Penny Appleby, went further.

“They’ve disrespected us,” said Appleby, drama director at the school. “They’ve disrespected our belongings.”

For seven years, the club has put on its plays and stored its equipment at the city-run Great Falls School. Productions sell out. And with more than 100 students involved, it’s one of the most popular after-school groups at EL.

At the summer’s start, most of the club’s possessions – tools, props and equipment – were in bins and on shelves in a room near the gym of the dilapidated former elementary school.

But when city leaders decided to make money on the gym, trying to rent the space that the club traditionally used for free, they called the school.

“I was told to move and was given a deadline,” said James Miller, Edward Little’s principal. So, he dispatched school janitors to the old building. They moved the drama supplies up two floors.

“They literally just threw everything into the room,” Appleby said.

Nothing was broken in the move, nor was the original storage well-organized, the principal said.

However, Miller sympathizes with the group.

“Their space has been narrowed and narrowed each year,” he said. Last year, their access to a changing room in the Great Falls basement was closed off due to safety concerns.

“Unfortunately, there’s no place for them at Edward Little,” Miller said. “The kids say, Why can’t we get something?'”

The club is scheduled to begin auditions for a new show on Sept. 28. Rehearsals start the next week. The show is planned for Dec. 5 and 6.

And the show will go on, said Raechel Biron, the club’s president.

“It will happen, even if it’s a lot more work than it has ever taken,” said the teenager. Yet, the mess should never have been made, she said.

“It’s like coming home and ,learning your house has been broken into,” she said.

On Tuesday, Appleby and club members held a tour of their facilities. Several parents went along. Members of the City Council were invited. None attended.

“We’re abused by the city of Auburn, and no one is listening,” Appleby said. “We have to just swallow it. We always clean up the mess and move on, but you can only do that so many times.”

Laurie Smith, the city’s community relations director, said the city is listening.

Though club parents say they called councilors’ homes, Smith said she heard of no tour. And she’s ready to sit down with club leaders.

“I want to meet,” said Smith, who has attended the shows herself. “I want to make it clear that we will work with them.”