SWANSEA – When Joseph Case High School Theatre takes the stage this Sunday for the preliminary round of the Massachusetts Educational Theatre Guild high school festival, two students in particular will have a lot invested in the competition.
Senior Stephanie Baxter and sophomore Stephen Conos spent about 100 hours of their own time writing the play, “Society’s Beauty, A Movement,” for the Case team.
All of the students wrote their own monologues for the auditions knowing Case Theatre Artistic Director Neil Jeronimo would be choosing not only the performers, but also the writer for this year’s production.
Baxter and Conos said they were both hoping to be selected as the writer as they headed into the auditions with a monologue based a personal insecurity or a time when they felt left out. “Within our auditions we tried to showcase our writing because we both wanted it, and he ended up picking both us of which was really cool,” said Baxter.
Though she’s a senior and he’s a sophomore, this isn’t the first time the two have “collaborated” on a theatre production. For the school’s spring show last year, Conos and Baxter shared a role as an FBI agent in the production, “Anything Goes.”
As they started writing the piece, they got advice from Jeronimo and local author Steve Manchester, who wrote the play the school’s theater department competed with last year.
“It’s about society’s perception of beauty and how different people perceive that and the insecurities that some people have,” said Conos.
In all, they selected about seven student monologues to weave into the production, some of which deal with very tough subjects to write about such insecurities and the loss of a parent. At first, they said it was a challenge because people weren’t comfortable talking about their insecurities, but as time went on the cast opted to wear t-shirts with a word stating his or her personal insecurity. “I think it’s eye-opening. It’s cool to see what everybody’s word is because you might not think it about someone but that’s how they feel on the inside,” said Baxter.
The play starts out with an original dance choreographed by student Ali Dube, followed by a scene with student Kylie Howard applying makeup to show her insecurities about not being pretty enough, they said.
Then another student, Lorelei Barcelos, launches into a monologue about how society wants her to exist in a place she’s not comfortable with. “That sets the stage too for the rest of the play,” said Conos.
Baxter, who normally writes poetry, took a creative writing class and a journalism class last year that got her into writing even more, she said. While Conos said he prefers to write short stories. “So it’s a perfect contrast,” he said of the writing partnership.
Since they were selected as the writers of the production, they spent long hours working on the piece, as they wrote and rewrote, refining as they went along. One of the aspects Conos said he’s most proud of is their creation of The Beauties, three characters who arc over the course of the play and end up questioning beauty and their morals.
Going into the process for this year’s competition piece, they said Jeronimo told the cast of 52 students they have to be vulnerable if they want to be a part of the production. “But I never understood how much it actually meant before this show,” said Conos.
This weekend, teams from around the state will be competing at school host sites. At Case, seven other teams will be competing including Fall River’s B.M.C. Durfee High School and Diman Regional Vocational Technical High School
Case is hosting the preliminary round on the Massachusetts Educational Theatre Guild competition this Sunday, March 3 (postponed from Saturday due to snow) starting at 9 a.m. at Case High School, 70 School St. Check the schedule of performance times at the website: metg.org. Admission is $12 for one play or $12 for the entire day.