Drama Production

The METG, or Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild is an organization dedicated to encouraging interest in every aspect of theater, from designing sets to writing plays. One, if not the, most popular event that The Guild runs is Festival, a yearly competition that sees schools from across the state performing a short, 40-minute show. This play comes from months of work, with actors who put in blood, sweat, and tears to see it come to fruition. Our school, or really Mr. Lacy, with significant pushback from the Acting Ensemble class, chose Five Down, One Across, a very heavy and dramatic play about a semi-closeted lesbian, her girlfriend, her son, grandmother, and a few close friends. Very generally, the mother is an provincial, insular, homophobic wretch who harasses her daughter, while the other five characters are gay or lesbian. The cast of the show spent months bringing it into the show that was performed for the judges, as well as the performances put on at the high school. The show was received overwhelmingly well by the audience at the Festival performances, with audible gasps and long breaks just for the audience to recover from laughter. Having an engaging audience always helps engage the actors, and especially encourages them to keep up their work. Though the cast may not have loved the show, they still spent the time and effort to see it portrayed in a good manner, and succeeded. The show moved past the preliminary stage and onto the semi-finals with hopes high. Because of regulations and a vague sense of “We need to be careful because of Covid”, only two rounds of competition were hosted, the preliminary and the semi-final stages. Both times, our school won the round, alongside two other schools who advanced or won, depending on the stage. If you happened to miss out on this show, don’t worry! The Fourth Wall Players are putting on another show in June 9th and 10th called Everybody. Come check it out!