By Daniel Hartill,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Andrew Harris closed his eyes and smiled.

“I can actually see myself,” the 51-year-old actor and director said, clearly pleased with the image he conjured in his mind.

The memory is of a little boy who’s 7 or 8 years old, standing on a stage and narrating a Nativity play before an audience in the Midlands region of England.

Even more than the performance itself, Harris remembers how he felt when it was over, when he realized that he’d been able to affect his hometown audience.

In some small way, he’d been able to make people feel better.

To Harris, hired in February to lead L/A Arts, that’s precious power the arts have. That’s what has kept him in the arts all his life.

Harris was born and raised in Stoke-on-Trent, an industrial town in the center of England known for its quarries and its pottery.

“It is a lot like it is here,” said Harris, noting the mills along the Androscoggin and the blue-collar population.

The difference is the way the community nurtured drama, he said. While Lewiston-Auburn certainly has some options, such as school groups, Community Little Theatre and The Public Theater, drama in England is a core part of any learning.

“It’s almost like reading and writing,” said Harris. It’s part of the curriculum. Emphasis is placed on public speaking and working together as a team.

“People say sports does that, but not every kid is right for sports,” he said.

By the time he was in his teens, he knew he wanted to spend his life in the arts.

In school, he performed a small role in the comedy “Arsenic and Old Lace.”

“I saw how much people got out of it,” he said.

He was hooked.

Harris studied acting and spent much of his career as a teacher, working on projects with the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Globe, The National Theatre and The Young Vic, as well as many regional theaters and community arts centers in England.

Meanwhile, he met his wife, Carol, an Auburn native who was attending college in England. They spent two decades making regular visits to Maine. Three years ago, they moved here.

After L/A Arts’ longtime director Richard Willing resigned in September, Harris applied for the job.

It seemed a perfect fit, Harris said. L/A Arts brings music, dance and drama to local schools and performance venues. Much of his time in England was spent doing the same thing.

However, there are big differences, mostly about money. A nonprofit group, L/A Arts gets its money from a combination of grants, foundations and the proceeds from its performances.

“I’m working on cracking the funding nut,”Harris said. “You’d have to go a long way in the U.K. to find a city without an arts policy.”

It’s the kind of policy that nurtured his love of the arts as a boy, he said.

Harris still enjoys performing. He played Froggy in last fall’s Portland Stage Company production of “The Foreigner.”

“It was a hoot,” he said. However, he could get the same thrill as L/A Arts director, listening to people as they leave a performance that he helped organize, he said.

“I’d like to overhear people going out of an event saying, That’s great,'” Harris said.