It’s a typical Tuesday afternoon at Bromfield. After the bell, the hallway is busy: athletes head to change for practices, students socialize with friends or run to catch the bus home. But down in Cronin Auditorium, something spectacular is going on. A group of talented teens is preparing to leave behind their lives as high school students for two hours as they step on stage, transforming themselves into entirely new people. This is the Bromfield Drama Society.
Today, the Drama Society is one of the largest clubs at Bromfield, drawing between 60 and 80 students each year. With increasing success, growing recognition, and a competitive reputation, Bromfield Drama certainly is thriving. In a typical year, the club puts on three shows: a fall drama, a winter one-act play for the Massachusetts High School Drama Festival, and a large spring musical. This winter, for the Drama Festival, Bromfield is performing a play titled “The Arsonists.” A German-translated story from World War II, “The Arsonists” tells the tale of two crafty arsonists disguised as salesmen. The protagonist, Biedermann, is tricked into letting the men into his home. He ignores the foreboding clues and numerous warnings from his wife that the arsonists are plotting against him.
Bromfield senior Emma Noyes plays the role of Biedermann’s wife, Babette. Noyes has been acting ever since she can remember and loves leaving herself in the wings and taking on new personas on stage. She describes the play saying, “There are a lot of laughs and a lot of screams, not to mention a lot of weirdness. It’s different, but that’s what we all like about it.”
Not only do the cast and crew enjoy “The Arsonists”, but so did the judges. Two weeks ago, Bromfield performed “The Arsonists” at the Massachusetts High School Drama Festival. In addition to winning a variety of individual awards, the production became a state semi-finalist.
Fifty years of drama
Started more than 50 years ago as a small group of actors and actresses, the Bromfield Drama Society has had a rewarding history, producing more than 110 shows. For 34 years, the club was under the direction of Michael McGarty, who came to Bromfield as a teacher and left as a director beloved and admired by everyone who worked with him. Sophomore Emma Sullivan, a chorus firefighter in “The Arsonists,” said, “Bromfield was extremely lucky to have Mr. McGarty for so many years. He created and maintained the fantastic reputation we have.”
When the job for director opened up in the mid ’70s, McGarty recognized the opportunity immediately and took on its challenges. “I was excited about trying new things [as drama director],” McGarty said. In the early years, he had very little to work with, barely even a stage. The school had a 146-seat “lecture hall” that was very small. Despite this, the club was able to work with what they had and put on many sophisticated productions.
Over the years, the program grew, gained a full-sized auditorium, and began to win more and more awards at competitions. While under McGarty’s leadership, the club made it to the final round of competition at the Massachusetts High School Drama Festival almost every year and won first place in 2002. From those early years the club slowly but surely built the reputation of excellence that it enjoys today. Looking back, McGarty recalls that his finest moments weren’t necessarily about achieving success, but rather seeing the passion in the actors and actresses. “Everything they did was fun and exciting, a challenge…and they were all working at what they loved,” he remembers. More recently, McGarty helped to produce the play “The Yellow Boat” in 2012, the second-to-last production he did before retiring from Bromfield. This production made it to the finals of the state competition.
A challenging play
George Kendall (File photo)
Along with the pleasure of directing “The Arsonists” come the many challenges of producing a show. For George Kendall, the current director of the Bromfield Drama Society, this has meant pouring his heart and soul into making this play a success and smoothing out any difficulties that have occurred. Kendall joined Bromfield this past fall and, according to McGarty and others, has done a fantastic job of transitioning into Bromfield.
“I’m glad to see that Mr. Kendall is creating a program where students are learning a lot about theater. I think the club’s success will continue,” McGarty told the Press. It goes without saying that Kendall has had huge shoes to fill after McGarty’s tenure as director, but he clearly has stepped up to the task.
One of the major problems Kendall faced with “The Arsonists” was the time limit. For the festival competition, each play must run no more than 40 minutes. Trimming down “The Arsonists,” originally a 90-minute stage masterpiece, was not easy. Kendall calls the play “a quick-moving…and ridiculously absurdist play, with both comic and theatrical elements.” Rachael Hettinger, a Bromfield junior who plays Anna, maid and semi-arsonist, loves the energy that the show gives off. Hettinger says, “It’s a show that makes you think. I hope it’s the kind of play that people find themselves thinking about even days after they see it.”
For each actor or actress, the show comes with its own challenges. Sophomore Marcelle Hazoury, a chorus firefighter in the play, finds the hardest part of any show is fulfilling her role. “One of the hardest things we go through when rehearsing a play is just discovering our character. We have to decide everything from the personality to the physicality of our character and their relationships with other characters,” Hazoury says.
However, the actors aren’t the only ones who help make this play happen. Behind the curtain, there is another whole group of immensely talented people helping to make this story come alive—the tech theater group. This portion of the Drama Society helps with stage management, set design, lighting, sound, and props to make the entire production run smoothly, yet explode with excitement. At the preliminary round of the Drama Festival, Colleen O’Shea and Alyssa Johnson won awards for technical excellence in stage management. In addition, the Bromfield tech theater class won an award for set design and construction; actors Danny Hayward and Emma Noyes won individual acting awards; and the ensemble of Will Ashley, Aislyn Fair, Jessica Flint, Marcelle Hazoury, and Emma Sullivan won an ensemble acting award.
For anyone involved with the Drama Society, getting through these challenges is certainly rewarding. But sometimes the reward isn’t always in the form of an award. For many of the thespians, the prize comes just from the joy of acting. For Noyes, the reward comes right before the curtain opens. She states “….my favorite part of every show is the 30-second time warp before the curtain opens. We’re all in positions, the lights are out, the stage is set, the audience is quiet. There’s always a struggle to overcome nerves, but in those 30 seconds, it all transforms into positive energy. We’re each mentally getting where we need to be, and it makes all the ‘drama’ worth it.”
Catch the Bromfield Drama Society’s performance of “The Arsonists” Saturday, March 16, at 6 p.m. at Cronin Auditorium as part of the Harvard Schools Trust Gala event. Tickets will be available at the door; $20 for adults and $10 for students.
