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Stoneham High Chasing State Honors At Drama Festival Semifinals

Students head to Westford Academy to compete in State Drama Festival Saturday.

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The newspapers won't print their brackets but don't let that fool you. This competition has all the drama of March Madness, maybe even more.

The Massachusetts Educational Theatre Guild (METG) will hold its State Drama Festival semifinals Saturday at seven sites across the state. North Reading, Stoneham, Norwood, Quabbin, Andover, along with host Westford Academy will compete at one site and two schools will move on to the finals.

Saturday's event is both a competition and a festival. It started with more than 200 schools across the state. Each performed March 4 at venues all over the state with eight or nine schools at each site. There were three judges and the top three schools at each site moved on to the semifinals. The finals are a three-day competition starting Thur., March 30, in Boston at the Back Bay Center on Berkeley Street.

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Similar to the Tony Awards, there are awards for everything theatre related. Students are judged for set up and tear down (must be done in under 5 minutes) and there are awards for lights, sound, calling the show, running the show, acting, technical awards, research awards, etc. The common thread with each award is that adults can play no part. Everything is student run.

All performances at Westford Academy are open to the public. It's $10 for a day long ticket and people can come and go - they can see all the shows or pick and choose.

Stoneham High School will perform Kindertransport at 11:30 a.m. at the Westford site. In the quarterfinals, Peter Canova, Daria Contino, Dalilah Degen-Portnoy and Casey Moriarty all earned special awards for their efforts.

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