Norah Jewett ‘25
On March 2, the Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild’s annual theater competition named “Drama Festival” held its preliminary round. Schools all across the state of Massachusetts met at different locations to perform the 40 minute shows that they had been working on for months in front of hundreds of theater students and judges. All aspects of the show are taken into account: the acting, the costumes, the set, the lights and sound, all parts that help make up a theater production would be nitpicked by several judges. Then, these judges would decide which of the 6-8 schools they had seen were fit to move on.
Beverly High School has been participating in this event for years, and the last time that the Drama Club had moved on was in 2020. However, right before the date of the Semi-Finals round, the world shut down due to COVID-19, and the students were unable to continue the Festival.
This year, though, Beverly High School advanced with their show titled Medea, a story taking place in Ancient Greece, about a woman who is betrayed by her ex-husband and seeks revenge against him.
Audrey Talbot (‘26), a member of Medea’s Savage Chorus, shares, “I think a lot of us during the award ceremony were starting to guess ourselves and think ‘maybe we won’t move on.’”
Another actor from the Savage Chorus, Cadyn Hollingsworth (‘25), laughs how she “wasn’t expecting to move on.”
“We just never had,” Hollingsworth states. “But after we performed, I kept thinking that we had a shot, and then immediately shut that throughout down because I thought ‘what are the chances.’”
But even with their doubts, members of the show agreed that they were remarkably proud of all of the people involved with making the show possible.
“To most of us it felt like the possibility of not moving on didn’t matter because we were just so proud of how we did on stage,” Talbot commented. “I honestly think the show couldn’t have gotten any better because we had given the performance of a lifetime. We completely poured everything we had onto that stage. And we are all so proud of ourselves and each other for that.”
Likewise, Jackson Murphy (‘25), the actor who placed Aegeus, states how he thinks “little things could have gone better, but overall the show was the best performance of Medea that [the club] had put on to date.”
Beverly High, along with several other schools, are set to perform at Semi-Finals at North Reading High School at 3:30PM on Saturday, March 9th. We wish them luck in their next performance!
Image credit: bhsstageright Instagram
