St. Mary’s thespians compete for state crown

LYNN – The St. Mary’s High School Drama Club will perform in a statewide theater competition for the first time in 40 years after pulling out a surprise win at last week’s regional festival.”It’s very exciting for us,” said Kara McGovern, the school’s drama director, in a rehearsal this week. “To hear our name, I was stunned.”The school will be one of six teams to compete in a semi-final against five other schools today in Fall River after it scored first place in a North Shore drama festival last weekend in Danvers.View a photo gallery of the dram club performing their award-winning play.The students saw themselves more as underdogs than champions, said Jake Kylie, who plays a dwarf and a prince in “The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon,” a fast-paced modern-day satire of fairly tales.”I was just trying not to be the worst,” Kylie said of his mindset going into the performance.Even after the play went off without a hitch, the students didn’t have high expectations, said JeanMarie LaPointe, an eighth-grader who plays Cinderella and Hansel,.”We were all holding hands, we were like, ‘Yeah, it’s going to be that one,'” LaPointe said, recalling the judges announcing the winners. “And then when they said us, we’re like screaming and crying.”Judges from The Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild also awarded several St. Mary’s actors, including LaPointe and Kylie, to an all-star cast made of the best performances of the day.McGovern said she thinks the drama club did so well because of the actors’ wit and on-point timing.”There’s some very, very strong comedic performances in this,” she said.McGovern said the last time St. Mary’s made it this far in the competition was in the 1970s, when the club moved on to be a state finalist.Junior Daniel Kraemer, who plays a narrator reading the fairy tales, said this year’s class is grateful to go down in the school’s history books.”It’s amazing, I don’t have words to describe it,” he said.Freshman Rebecca Bourque, who plays the devil, said the school has been supportive of the drama club’s success, enthusiasm that she said is normally reserved for St. Mary’s sports teams.”It’s really fun to see how they’re so excited for us,” she said. “? To see us getting some recognition other than just a sports team being successful in something.”The club has worked as hard as any sports team, practicing for several hours a day most days of the week since January, she said.And junior Sarah O’Brien said practicing for an award-winning play becomes a full-time job.”Even when we’re like in school or at home, the lines are still going,” she said.And those who aren’t memorizing lines are working hard to put on a flawless production.Senior Jessica Arsenault is one of the crew’s make-up artists. In the play’s final scene, she transforms actress LeAnn Keo from a doctor to a warty Rumpelstiltskin in just a few minutes.”And the makeup’s like really hard to stick,” she said.The cast and crew also say McGovern works tirelessly as director.”Ms. McGovern devotes so much time to this, we really wouldn’t be able to do any of this without her,” said junior Sarah O’Brien, who plays one of the narrators alongside Kraemer.While they may have been intimidated by their competition last weekend, O’Brien said the St. Mary’s drama club is going into this next level of competition with a clear head.”We’ve never been this far, so we’ll just do our best,” she said.If you go:St Mary’s Drama Club will perform “The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon” Saturday in the state semi-finals of The Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild’s 2012 High School Drama Festival. They will compete against five other teams at B.M.C. Durfee High School, 360 Elsbree St. in Fall River, at about 4 p.m. Tickets are $10 and available at the door. For more information, call 508-558-5769.Amber Parcher can be reached at [email protected].