Attleboro High School Hosts and Competes in State Drama Festival

hosted the Massachusetts High School Drama Festival’s preliminary round of competition to determine which schools will advance to the semi-final round of the festival.

A total of 112 schools are competing at 14 different high school locations in the first round of the tournament. Three of the eight schools from the Attleboro High School host site advance to the semi-finals, to be held in two weeks. Those three schools include Weston High, Hingham and Norwood. 

Aside from Attleboro High School itself, the school is host to competing theater groups from Bellingham Memorial High School, Franklin High School, Hingham High School, Norwood High School, Somerville High School, Taunton High School and Weston High School.

Each school performed a one-act play lasting no more than 40 minutes and was judged according to guidelines by the Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild. The two judges at Attleboro High School this year were Kallin Johnson, the Director of Music at Notre Dame Academy in Hingham, and Cara Pacifico, a Boston area costume designer.

Attleboro performed an original work by their drama coach Peter Tarsi, who is also a physics teacher at the high school.

The play, “Ode to a First Kiss” was not original written for the festival.

“I wrote it for me,” Tarsi said. After finishing the work last summer he shared it with his students and they decided that they wanted to perform it.

Brianne Akers, a junior who plays the lead female role of Melissa said of the play, “It’s just a really sweet, meaningful story," Akers said. "It’s so adorable and I love that the audience really gets involved in everything.

The play is the story of two friends who struggle with determining whether or not they want to be more than friends. The play is centered on a quote from the German biographer Emil Ludwig which says:

“The decision to kiss for the first time is the most crucial in any love story. It changes the relationship of two people much more strongly than even the final surrender; because this kiss already has within it that surrender.”

The relatable romantic comedy comes from the real life experiences that Tarsi went through about 15 years ago.

“The inspiration was a kiss that I didn’t have with someone,” Tarsi said.

The school held auditions for the play in December and the group has been rehearsing twice a week since January until now. Unfortunately, the numerous snowstorms cost them two days of rehearsal, but Tarsi says the lost time was made up with a few longer rehearsals.

The hope is that the extra work will enable the school to continue its success in the festival as in three of the past four years, the AHS theater group has been able to advance to the semi-finals of the competition.

Once there, the atmosphere among the students changes according to Akers and co-star junior Matthew Fyfe.

Both were in the semi-finals last year and said that, while the opening round is very friendly, the attitudes become a lot more serious as the competition progresses beyond the first round. 

"It’s a little more intense," Akers said. "Everyone is just focusing so hard on their own show."

“It was different,” Fyfe said.

 Attleboro High School has hosted the drama festival for eight years and with so many students and parents visiting from different schools, the coordination of the event can get hectic, though the task gets easier each year, according to Tarsi, who was also the host of the event in addition to his work with the AHS theater group.

"It was difficult the first time because we had to do everything from scratch,” Tarsi said.

“This year actually went really smoothly because each of these schools came down one day this week to practice on our stage."

While hosting the festival creates a lot of work for the school, Tarsi enjoys it and takes pride in creating an enjoyable atmosphere for all of the visiting students and parents.

"That actually means more to me than winning," he said. "If all my guests feel like they had a great time here, that’s all that matters to me."