UPDATED: Comedic Turn For Framingham Drama Comedy

The award-winning Framingham High School Drama Company last year did not make it to the finals of the Massachusetts Education Theatre Guild’s drama festival.

Framingham High had made the finals 12 of the last 13 years, under the direction of Donna Wresinski.

This year, there is a lot of laughing about their festival entry. For the first time ever, the Framingham High School Drama Company’s entry in the state’s drama festival is a comedy.

It’s a new chapter for the Framingham High Drama Company, as Framingham will bring Louis Sachar’s beloved children’s books Sideways Stories from Wayside School to life on the stage.

There is a benefit performance for the public tonight at 7. Tickets are $10, and will be sold at the door.

Preliminaries of the METG festival begin Saturday. Framingham High School is hosting and will perform Saturday. The public is invited to attend.

Sideways Stories From Wayside School

Sachar’s chapter books are popular with elementary school students, so the drama company is looking for support of their production with Framingham families.

Written in 1978, the series of three chapter books tell the tales of a school built 30 floors high by mistake, with one classroom per floor, but no 19th floor. Ironically, each book has 30 chapters.

The less-than-an-hour-long production takes the audience inside the 30-story high school, where the strangest things can happen, including a wicked teacher turning students into apples.

The production is bright and colorful. The student-made sets and the vivid costumes are a feast for the eyes.

This is a dramatic turn for the company that has staged production that include a tragedy at a Spanish wedding, Depression-era drownings, a witch boy who seeks to become human to fall in love with a human girl, families struggling with mental illness and a boy, 12 who flees from a repressive military regime.

Wresinski said the idea for a comedy came from her co-director Chris Brindley, who is a theatre teacher at Framingham High.

“Chris saw a production at Emerson College,” said Wresinski, “and it has wanted to do it here.”

Wresinski was leaning towards a production of a Greek tragedy, but she said they did something else new this year.

They asked the students in the production, more than 100 of them, to pick which play they wanted to do. Wresinski said the students made presentations on the costumes, dance, sets, hair, makeup, etc.

Although a majority of the teens favored the Greek tragedy, Wresinski said their presentations convinced her it was time for a new chapter with the drama company - comedy.

“Comedy is very tough to pull off,” said Wresinski. ‘The show needs to be fresh each time it is performed.”

Wresinski said many of the kids think they are funny, but that doesn’t mean they can make comedy work.

“Comedy is much harder than drama to pull off,” said Wresinski.

The Framingham K-12 fine and performing arts director brought in a clowning teacher for the actors and actresses in the production, to help them with improvisation and timing.

Wresinski said she likes having new concepts in a festival entry. This production also uses puppetry and video.

The actors will take the “audience on an a ride,” said Wresinski.

She said the show is “not a funny ha-ha comedy, but rather an energetic experience.”

It is the “physicality - the expressions on their faces - that will get them,” said Wresinski.

Comedy has been successful at the METG drama festival. At least twice, a comedy has won the top prize in the state.

Wresinski is hoping the company’s comedic ride will take them to the top this year.

There are only about a dozen actors and actresses in the show, but Wresinski said 106 students when you include the crew.

The student-run play can not run longer than 40 minutes. Students have a a set amount of time to stage the production and to clear the stage afterwards. If they go over, they are disqualified.

The semifinal round is March 19, if Framingham High moves on from the preliminary round.

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Photo of Andrew Caira as Mrs. Gorf. Petroni Media Company photo.

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