Marblehead High School senior Benji Boyd heard about the 1920 silent movie “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” from a YouTube video about the history of the Weimar Republic. Intrigued, Boyd looked into it further and discovered that the movie, called by critic Roger Ebert “the first true horror film,” the movie was a “big deal,” with many famous directors referring to it as part of their inspiration.
“I felt like it was the classic behind a lot of things, and I wanted to do something with it,” Boyd said.
That “something” has turned out to be adapting the film into “The Sleepwalker,” Marblehead High’s entry into the 2025 Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild Drama Festival.
MHS will perform “The Sleepwalker” in the first round of the competition at Melrose High School on Saturday, March 1.
But before that, local audiences will have two opportunities to see “The Sleepwalker” performed on the stage at the Performing Arts Center at the Veterans Middle School. The understudy cast will put on the play on Thursday, Feb. 27, with the main cast appearing the following night, Friday, Feb. 28. Both shows will start at 7 p.m., and the run time is approximately 40 minutes, the strict time limit for Drama Fest shows.
Boyd said he enjoyed the process of writing the script.
“The plot is pretty straightforward, so I basically just had to come up with, if the characters could speak, what would they be saying to explain the plot?” he said.
That plot centers on a series of mysterious murders that begins to plague the quiet town of Holstenwall after the arrival of a new attraction at a local fair. The enigmatic Dr. Caligari claims that his ward, a sleepwalker named Cesare, has power to answer any question put to him, and to see into the past and future.
After his power is put to the test, the townspeople begin to suspect that the omniscient sleepwalker might not just be predicting the murders but causing them, too.
The film runs about 90 minutes but has “1920s pacing,” so not much had to be cut to trim it to the Festival’s specifications, Boyd said.
The lead role of Francis will be performed by Scarlett Kindle in the main cast and Isabel Scogland in the understudy cast.
The main villain in the show, Doctor Caligari, will be played by Anya Kane in the main cast and Brady Weed in the understudy cast.
The sleepwalker Cesare is Sam Jendrysik in the main cast and Niko King Mahan in the understudy cast.
Jane, the heroine and main love interest, will be portrayed by Charlotte Seliger in the main cast and Lucy Key in the understudy cast.
“A lot of the rest of my cast is gender bent from the original roles in the movie, either because there’s not that many female characters in the movie or because we just have a lot more women than men in our drama club,” Boyd said.
The vibe is more spooky than scary, “more of a Tim Burton film than a Stephen King adaptation,” according to Boyd.
“There are some murders that happen on stage, but they’re very dramatic — they’re not jump scares; there’s not tons of blood,” Boyd said.
The original film had “crazy” expressionist sets, and the MHS production will try to emulate the effects with its tech, including the lighting.
“Our lighting is going to be very dramatic, very expressionist — big shadows on the wall and spotlights, different colors, high saturation,” Boyd said. “Imagine a little kid holding a flashlight under their face to tell a scary story. We have stage lights that are going to make some scenes look just like that.”
Program director Ashley Skeffington echoed Boyd’s enthusiasm about the lighting. She spoke to the Current after last Thursday’s rehearsal, noting that lighting designer Lucas Rosen was still in the auditorium changing out some gels with former faculty member Greg Dana, who continues to volunteer his time with the drama program.
“He’s got some really, really cool ideas for this as well to make it very spooky and very jarring,” Skeffington said. “I’m excited for people to be able to see his work as well.
Skeffington’s brother, Brad, has helped the crew build a big platform structure that will be on stage throughout the production.
“It’s going to help us have different levels of height on the stage,” Boyd said. “It’s visually really cool.”
Drama program veterans Monica Pechhold and Molly Farber have been given “free reign” with the costuming, and Aoife Sullivan running the soundboard will be engineering a few music cues to add to the spooky effect, Skeffington added.
On March 1 in Melrose, Marblehead will be competing in a field of approximately eight schools, vying for the chance to advance to the semifinal round. Over the last decade or so, MHS has experienced success in the opening round, with a number of students in the cast and crew earning all-star company awards.
Trips out of the semifinals to the finals in Boston have proven elusive, though this year’s Marblehead entry may score a few points with the judges for being student written and directed.
“If there’s anything that I would say I am exceptionally proud of, it’s the fact that we’ve cultivated this environment where students are capable of not just acting and not just operating as stage hands, but we have had for the last few years a lot of really good student writers and directors step up to the plate, which I think is a really cool learning experience for everybody involved,” Skeffington said.
