The curtains closed, the audience roared its approval and Ann Marie Dorr, a quiet teen who’d written a sweet, quietly engaging play, got total rock star treatment.

Through the hallways of Poland Regional High School, she met with “Awesome!” and “Amazing, man.”

A jubilant Jay Grant and Ryan Long even hoisted the petite Dorr on their shoulders. (One teacher warned, “Watch out, she’s wearing a skirt!”)

Mt. Blue High School debuted Dorr’s first play, “Conversations in the Park,” Saturday at the Western Hills Regional Drama Festival.

This weekend, at nine sites around Maine, 80 high schools competed in the 2007 Maine Drama Festival. Students could perform original works or classics, so long as it fit within the strict 40-minute limit.

For three years in a row, Mt. Blue’s performed a student-written piece. Dorr, a senior, also directed and picked costumes.

Her play centered on the people who populate a park on a normal day. A harried mom and her daughter. Two fighting lovers. A homeless man. A jaded business-type who rebuffs a hippie’s suggestion to just sit back and enjoy the pond ducks. (“I like silence and I hate ducks.”)

In between and during each encounter, Dorr filled the stage with people riding bikes, jogging, pushing a stroller and chasing after three invisible dogs. (Freshman Aubrey Wiggins used stiff wire leashes.)

The experience was “exhilarating!” Wiggins said. “This is the first time I’ve ever done something like this.”

Deborah Muise, an English teacher and theater director at Mt. Blue in Farmington, said the 18-member cast had practiced for two months.

They looked pretty comfortable on stage in front of hundreds of other students.

“We have fun with it and if you’re having fun with it, it’s that much easier to relax and not worry about it,” said sophomore Jonah Roberts.

Dorr admitted to being “very pleased and shell-shocked” after the show. She’d started the play last summer and kept redrafting right up until February. Dorr wants to go to college and study film, perhaps get into writing plays or screenplays as a career.

“It’s nice to see what people bring to their character and what happens when they have to improv,” she said. “I think they did a really good job.”

The Mt. Blue players will perform “Conversations” at least twice more, with shows at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday night at Mt. Blue High School.

Two finalists picked at each regional – one for Class A, one Class B – will go onto state finals in two weeks.

Winners will be announced online today around noon at mainedramacouncil.com

Kill the lights, cue the curtain….

Local schools competing in the Western Hills Regional Drama Festival

• Jay High School, “First in Line”

• Oxford Hills Regional High School, “Step On a Crack”

• Gray-New Gloucester High School, “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep”

• Monmouth Academy, “The Adventures of Captain Neato Man”

• Mt. Blue High School, “Conversations in the Park”

• Poland Regional High School, “The FBI is Laughing at You”

Regional winners announced at noon today at mainedramacouncil.com

“It’s nice to see what people bring to their character and what happens when they have to improv. I think they did a really good job.”
Ann Marie Dorr