Senior Project Comes To Life at NHS

By Tanjua Damon

Performing is nothing new for Newtown High School senior Deirdre Dougherty, but actually writing and directing your own work is untested waters for the aspiring writer.

Deirdre worked on her one-act play entitled, What I Learned in School Today, for her senior project with Ruth-Ann Baumgartner, who is involved with The Town Players, Newtown’s community theater company. She has been working on the play for close to two years now and will be providing a free public performance of her work on Monday, June 4, at 7 pm, in the Lecture Hall at Newtown High School.

The one-act play is very informal, Deirdre said. It is not like a large production put on by the drama club, but rather a simple production with actors holding scripts.

It is like two plays in one. One plot encompasses two characters who are opposites in a high school and feed off each other. The second plot is the death of a student, which is the major conflict in the play.

Although the play is not based on the deaths of Newtown High School seniors Jonathan Ullo and Greg Chion, the playwright admitted that the recent loss of these two young lives to disease did provide Deirdre with observations and information from other students to add to the play. It received an honorable mention in the Connecticut Playwright Contest.

“It speaks for itself in a lot of ways. I think the school community can identify with this because of the deaths we have experienced this year,” Deirdre said. “It’s real. I wanted it to be real. I wanted it to be what I have captured in high school and what my friends have dealt with.”

Newtown High School students will perform various characters Deirdre has developed for her play. The cast of characters include Leah Blewett as Zoe, Mike Sobo as Scott, Kristen Coates as Laura, Michelle Black as Dana, Janine Pixley as Stacy, Jeff Corbeil as the principal, Travis Finlayson as the teacher, and Beth English, Lauren Parrish and Josh Ellen as students.

“I really enjoyed this. It was an enjoyable experience,” she said. “The conflict is that someone dies. They are so polarized before then they come together at the end.”

This play deals with issues, language and the life of high school students. It provides an inside look of high school through the eyes of a student who has been there for the last four years.