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Berlin, Ocean Pines News Worcester County Bayside Gazette Logo Berlin, Ocean Pines News Worcester County Bayside Gazette

410-723-6397

Student-written plays to grace Stephen Decatur High stage

BERLIN—The Stephen Decatur High School Theatre Department on Thursday, will present three performances of its spring production “Flights of Fancy,” from Wednesday, March 19, to Friday, March 21 at 7 p.m. The performances are a compendium of five award-winning student-written plays that will be performed in the school’s auditorium, which is located at Route 50 and Seahawk Road.
The awards were provided by the Cabaret Club of The Parke in Ocean Pines during its Sixth Annual Student Playwrights Competition and the one-act scripts have been compiled into a publication, along with 20 photographs taken by the student participants. The winning entries were contemporary-themed dramas and the two scripts that received honorable mentions were period pieces, according to the production’s director Gwen Lehman.
High school senior Alex Cooley won the $300 first prize with “Lights. Camera. ROBBERY!” The play is about a young man’s desire to become a screenwriter and how his ambitions are thwarted by an untimely robbery.
“I think it is very important that the students’ work is being shown off because usually student work doesn’t go past the classroom despite large amounts of effort being placed into it,” Cooley wrote about the production.
Lehman said the winning scripts had been compiled and published as “Flights of Fancy” through the online self-publishing Web site Blurb.com and may be previewed at the Blurb Store, under the listing “MamaDrama” and under the genres education and theatre.
Megan Mitchell, a junior, won the $200 second prize with “Our Little Boy Blue;” a two character play depicting what two young parents go through after losing their child, according to Lehman. Mitchell wrote, “I am so excited that all the hard work and effort put into this project will be published in a book.”
Sophomore Sammi Schachter won the $100 third prize with “The Letter,” which Lehman said deals with a family conflict over a girl’s desire and effort to get into an Ivy League school that her family cannot afford.
Two honorable mention awards of $50 each were also presented. They went to juniors Scott Devenny, for “Over Newbury Street” and Caitlyn Nilo for “Triangulation,” both of which were set in the 19th century.
“Over Newbury Street” deals with the self-absorption of a mother which leads to the neglect of her daughter, and  “Triangulation” deals with an old enmity caused by a love triangle, according to Lehman.
In addition, the students took portraits of each other, based on the theme “flights of fancy,” and those photographs are included in the publication, Lehman added. An exhibit of the student photographs are also on display in the library prior to the performance and will be shown in the auditorium lobby during the evening performances, she said.
For more information about the performances of the publication, contact the school at 410-641-2171.