Over 70 students, countless hours of rehearsal and one unforgettable stage. On May 16, the Roberts-Dubbs Auditorium lit up for the Drama Society’s annual Student Directed Festival (SDF), referred to by Brookline Friends of the Performing Arts as the “jewel in the crown” of the drama production season.
The eight shows presented at the SDF were each directed by teams of two upperclassmen. These pairs oversaw the script-writing, auditions and casting processes, and scheduled rehearsals many months in advance of the SDF showcase.
Alongside the theatrical performances, the festival featured a unique tradition: a companion bakeoff where each cast prepared a dish reflecting elements of their play. Adult judges rated the food in terms of taste, presentation and connection to the show. “Second in Command,” directed by juniors Seth Moll and Gus Lubin, clinched first place in the culinary competition with show-themed cookies, vanilla cake, brownies and scrambled eggs.
One of the pieces, “Operation: Party,” directed by senior Ella Ngo-Miller and junior Anderson Tsai, was loosely based on a “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” episode. Tsai said that he enjoyed working one-on-one with each of their actors to balance the different demands of the performance, such as projecting well without sacrificing expressivity in their character choices. He said that working alongside Ngo-Miller was invaluable to his growth as a director.
“[Ngo-Miller] is a veteran director with loads of experience, so she’s taught me so much about what it means to be a leader in this community,” Tsai said. “Many times on a stage or in a performance, everyone sees the cast and how they perform. Everyone is always like, ‘that was amazing,’ or ‘You look so calm.’ But what most people don’t see is the work that everyone puts into the show weeks and months in advance.”
According to junior Daniel Friedman, who directed “Hey, Darlene” with junior Miles Rosenfield, the shows are relatively short—around 20 minutes—but the creative process directors embark on to create the final script is a much greater time commitment.
Friedman said that he and Rosenfield originally had multiple ideas, but settled on a Western comedy about two brothers and a girl named Darlene, because they felt it related to their experiences managing the trials of junior year.
“[There are] a lot of expectations on you to be responsible and looked up to as a mentor. Of course, there’s going to be smaller issues, and you’re going to have to take the punches and roll with it,” Friedman said. “You definitely have to be authoritative, which has been a learning process for me. It’s been more difficult than I expected it to be, but I’ve gotten better at it. Some people get this naturally, and others have to pick this up.”
Junior Isabel Olive directed “All, Aboard!” and said that communication with her co-director, junior Quinn Friedman, was essential to envision each scene and properly understand how to teach and motivate their cast.
“The festival was so amazing—to see all of our friends perform, and [see] how they have brought their visions to life, with so many different views and genres,” Olive said. “It’s very different from other shows because it’s such a short, close-knit group of people that you spend so much time with over two months.”
Students who served as lighting technician (senior Ellie Tytell), sound technician (junior Arik Smith), head of props design (junior Ada Goldstein) and run crew (senior Liesl Shick and junior Talia Hsieh) contributed invaluably to the final production, Tsai said. As designated photographer for the SDF, he said that he saw sneak peeks of each show before Saturday and was excited for them to be performed in front of a live audience.
“Each one is truly a phenomenal piece, with amazing aspects in each one making them unique to the directors, and actors and technicians putting them on,” Tsai said. “The part I’m going to miss the most is easily the cast and crew I’ve worked so closely with during this process. For example, my cast has nine people, and the close-knit community between each group is unmatched by anything else throughout the rest of the school year.”
