MHS Drama Club is inviting the public to another open dress rehearsal of “It’s About Pirates and Nothing Else” at the Veterans School Performing Arts Center this Friday, March 8, at 7 p.m.
COURTESY PHOTO / AVA GENOVESI
On Saturday, March 2, the students of the Marblehead High School Drama Club boarded a bus bound for St. John’s Prep to compete in the 2024 Massachusetts High School Drama Festival, or Drama Fest for short.
MHS performed a student-written play “It’s About Pirates and Nothing Else” (formerly “The Life of the Phoenix”) alongside five other productions, and eagerly awaited the decision of a panel of judges on which schools would advance to the next round. After a day of excitement and anticipation, the results came in. The pirates of MHS will advance to the Drama Fest semifinals.
On Saturday, March 9, MHS will head out to compete at Framingham High. Director Ashley Skeffington, an English teacher at MHS and a Drama Fest alum herself, expressed her excitement at seeing the show move on and praised the students for taking the show into their own hands.
“When students have this level of autonomy in a production, there’s a huge buy in. They care more, they pay attention to details, and they push each other to do better,” SKeffington said.
One of the favorite Drama Fest traditions includes All-star Company Awards — recognition given to individual members of a show’s cast and crew to highlight their work. Molly Farber, Monica Pechhold and Liv Niles were honored for technical excellence in costume design and the engineering of a cardboard hydra head, and Jacob Piascik and Matias Watts Cruz both received acting awards.
COURTESY PHOTO / ANYA KANE
One of the biggest challenges during rehearsals was getting the play to run under 40 minutes, as is required by the competition. Student writers Luke Menslage and Brady Weed put their heads together only a few days before the competition to work out what to cut. Thankfully, the writers and cast managed to get the show down to only 38 minutes by nailing down pacing – even if it meant actors had to talk over the audience’s laughter a few times.
Also advancing to semifinals is our host school St. John’s Prep, with “Nothing/ Something” and Georgetown High with “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” The exact schedule for the semifinals has yet to be announced, but the time slots for each performance will be posted on the Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild Instagram account as soon as they are solidified.
In the meantime,fans can follow the MHS Drama Club Instagram account @marbleheaddrama.
Current intern Benji Boyd plays the role of Ronald in “It’s About Pirates and Nothing Else.”
