For many years, Franklin's FHS Players Theater group has participated in the New Hampshire Educational Theater Guild (NHETG). For many years, they have won at the Regional Level and advanced to the State Festival as displayed by the plaques on the wall of the Opera House. However, for the last four years, the current students have lost out on the Festival experience due to Covid. Four years ago, this year's seniors were freshmen. Their freshmen year, they were preparing their festival piece, performed it for a live audience and then just a day before they were supposed to travel to Festival, covid came and shut the festival down. Their sophomore year, there was a remote version where they stayed in Franklin as a group, watched other schools performed video taped scenes and got an online recorded critique. Last year, there was one festival and no State advancement due to the low number of schools ready and able to join the festival. They ended up performing and three students earned recognition from the adjudicators, but the true element of a Regional Festival and then the potential advancement to states, was lost.
This year, as seniors, Nick Gammel and Angelia LaBrecque directed their peers in a one act entitled "The Specialist". They performed this past Saturday at an all day event at Kingswood Regional School with Pittsfield Middle/ High, White Mountain Regional, Co-Brown Academy and Kingswood and at around 7:30 pm, were announced as an adjudicator choice to advance to the State Festival on April 7 and 8 at Gilford High School. At States, they will present once again and be professionally adjudicated with 8 other schools from all over NH. Advancement from the State Festival leads to the New England Drama Festival. As well as being recognized as Best Show, juniors Leah Cote and Olivia Sylvester also were awarded All Star Acting awards for their performances. Other performers included Zoe Nagle, Noah Alers-Alers, Michelle Emery, Kayli-Ann Foskey and Lillian Corrow. The tech team included Alex Lard, Libby Femenella, Ollie Foskey and Kaia Roper. Keira Michaels and Xero Dover also joined as FHS Players members to support their peers.
The State Festival is open to the public to watch and enjoy. We are very proud of our students and their accomplishment and wish them all the best at States!!
