After months of practice and preparation, the PIHS Competition play squad have put on their final performance at Brewer on Maine Regional Drama Festival. I was lucky enough to be a part of the team and had the chance to go on the journey with the rest of the theater kids.

Our play this year She Was Only a Farmer’s Daughter is a family-drama set in 1920s America about love and deceit, which received amazing feedback from the audience after the home performance at PIHS on Wednesday, March 8. We were to compete with three other schools in southern Maine and fought for multiple awards.

The crew left for Brewer following the lead of director Zack Powers and Jake Graham with nervousness and excitement on Friday, we got to watch a few performances by other schools that night and learn from their critiques to make sure we hit the targets the next day.

Everyone arrived at the performing center early on our day of performance. Hair and make-up team began working around the same time the set crew double-checked all of the set pieces. During the fifty-minute tech time, sound and lighting departments and actors got to have their final rehearsal. At around six p.m, the actors brought their best acting skills and serious attitude on stage and put on a wonderful performance which earned the crowd’s laughter and applause.

The judges of the festival praised Presque Isle for our commitment in our jobs and have pointed out some great choices we’ve made in terms of make-up and set in the critiques later in the evening. We went home with three individual awards celebrating our outstanding works in acting, sound and art design. 

On the bus back to Presque Isle, Max Tetreault ’23 looked back and said, “I think our cast did an amazing job, they were loved by the audience. I wanna thank my set crew and the hair and make-up crew as well cause they just did fabulously.” Zoey Violette ’24 added “It was really our best performance on stage. Even though we didn’t get lots of awards I still think we were all incredible.”