SWAMPSCOTT — The High School Drama Club has made it to the state finals for the first time since 1999 for its renditions of “Desire, Desire, Desire” and “DMV Tyrant,” both by American playwright Christopher Durang.
Each year the Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild (METG) holds a High School Drama Festival where schools from across the Commonwealth compete with one-act plays. The competition includes around 112 plays.
“Of the 112 one-act plays that enter the festival, fourteen will be selected as state finalists, of which three will be named winners,” METG’s website said.
Swampscott’s club will have its performances Friday night at the Back Bay Events Center in Boston.
“I keep telling everyone how it’s already a win for Swampscott,” said Will Van Dam, a senior student at Swampscott High in the Drama Club. “I mean, the last time this happened for us was 24 years ago, it’s really a great feeling all around, just being so small and this happening is so rare. It feels good for all of us.”
Van Dam plays the census taker in “Desire, Desire, Desire.” Director Jim Pearse and Assistant Director Kayla LeClerc have made the whole process of the festival really fun, he said.
“We make it fun, and we don’t put pressure on ourselves, we never expected to get this far … so it’s great,” Van Dam said.
Pearse said Durang has plays that are “sort of crazy onstage” with a lot of humor. “DMV Tyrant” is about a person who is having issues obtaining a license and goes to the Department of Motor Vehicles to sort it out.
“The DMV lady, she is not helpful, and hilarity ensues,” Pearse said.
“Desire, Desire, Desire,” he said, is a “spoof” on characters from Tennessee Williams plays such as “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
Pearse and LeClerc said that working with the students on these plays has been great.
“We always say we get the best kids,” LeClerc said.
Two of the three schools who win the festival’s finals will “go on to represent Massachusetts in the New England Drama Festival, the regional showcase of secondary school theatre,” according to METG’s website.
“The kids are super, super excited to be going and we’re thrilled for them,” Pearse said. “The play is, I think, hilarious, so we’re just really excited to be participating.”
Besides practicing and performing Durang’s plays, the Drama Club is also putting on its spring musical “Cabaret” on May 4, 5, and 6.
