Benji Boyd, Junior, Assistant Editor
On Wednesday, October 4th, the Marblehead High Drama Club gathered in the choir room for an announcement they’d all been waiting for. Directors Ashley Skeffington and Andrew Scoglio were waiting for them as they filed in and set up their chairs. In a dramatic unveiling, they revealed a whiteboard decorated with more than a dozen playbills, and they encouraged students to guess what they would be performing in the spring.
After ruling out the obvious duds, students were left stumped by the unlikely array of choices before them. Skeffington checked the time and quickly excused herself, leaving Scoglio alone and seemingly just as confused as the club. However, moments later, a knock on the door revealed the true musical.
Skeffington, returning with a ‘Love, Actually-style’ stack of posters, page-by-page led students on with false alarms such as, “This year’s musical is going to be Wicked . . .” (page turn) with the poster falling to the floor; the true musical was still a mystery.
Then, Skeffington produced one last poster: one that would look very similar to many juniors and seniors looking forward to their spring dances. Holding the words, “Will you direct Prom with me?” Skeffington managed to pull off a ‘TikTok-worthy’ musical reveal and an Instagram-worthy prom-posal at the same time.
Prom premiered on Broadway in 2016, and it tells the story of a girl from Indiana who wants to take her girlfriend to prom but faces opposition from groups within her community. “I think it’s fun even though it deals with an important topic,” said Skeffington of the play. “It’s a story that needs to be told.”
Auditions will begin for Prom around late December or early January and are not limited to members of the Drama Club. The hope is to open the show two weeks before the MHS Junior Prom, which could be a fun venue for prom-posals. For the time being, the plan is to stage the show in the MHS auditorium, but the directors are open to moving the production to the MVMS PAC should the need for more space arise.
Until then, the Drama Club looks forward to putting on its staged reading of It’s About Pirates and Nothing Else, currently scheduled for October 26. Afterwards, auditions and rehearsals will begin for the real production, which will be brought to the 2024 Dramafest season. In the meantime, Dramafest is always looking for new cast and crew members, and the club hopes that the community is as excited as they are for this spring’s ‘Prom’ season!