On February 22, Hingham High School’s Drama Club began their final week of rehearsals for their haunting festival piece Shuddersome: Tales of Poe, written by playwright Lindsay Price. The show is composed of four of Edgar Allen Poe’s most chilling stories: The Tell Tale Heart, The Oval Portrait, The Raven, and The Masque of the Red Death, each incorporating one of Poe’s classic motifs.

Created by the Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild to provide drama students an opportunity to showcase their work, Festival connects students who have similar interests.

At its most basic level, Festival is a competition that is divided into three levels: preliminaries, semi­finals, and states. Every school involved in festival attends preliminaries. From each preliminary site, three schools advance to a semi­final location. From semi­finals, three schools advance onto states. In its entirety, Festival is an annual celebration of the many components of theater, from acting to more technical aspects.

This weekend, Hingham will travel to Duxbury to perform Shuddersome: Tales of Poe at the Duxbury Performing Arts Center. Family and friends are encouraged to come support the drama club in Duxbury at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday. There is an admittance fee of $10.

The fifteen­member ensemble cast of Shuddersome has been rehearsing with their director Ms. Levy­Sisk and their student assistant director Jessica Shawles since late December. Additionally, the show has an incredibly hard­working crew which is further divided into specialized units: set design, set building, backstage, lights, sounds, props, costumes, and make­up.

Freshman actor Andersson Perry describes the rehearsal process as “somewhat intense.” He explains, “Most of the time, we’re here four out of the five days of the school week… It’s good bonding time. We’re productive, but we have a good time.” The cast has been rehearsing Monday through Thursday after school every week since the cast list was posted.

Although Festival is admittedly a competition, participants widely agree that Festival is mainly an opportunity for people who share a love of theater to meet and to display their hard work. Junior Samantha Leary say, “It’s more of friends seeing each other’s work that everyone has worked so hard on.” Sam’s favorite aspect of festival is “being able to interact with other people who enjoy drama and who enjoy theater.”
Similarly, senior backstage crew member Heather McIntosh says that her favorite part of festival is “meeting new people” at each new round of competition.