On Thursday, April 11, the Drama Club took their annual trip to the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope for a festival and competition. The theater resides in a building that was formerly a grist mill for grains, but the building is now used for musicals and other dramatic productions. The yearly festival at the playhouse consists of workshops for the actors and a competition between students from schools all over Pennsylvania. They put on a 20 minutes shows, and at the end of the day they received awards based off of their performances.

    Much like the trip to DeSales earlier this year, the students had the opportunity to work with experienced actors in order to approve their own ability. Senior Autumn McDonough said “the workshops I participated in in New Hope were workshops for Improvisation and Shakespeare. Both were very eye opening, since we focused a lot on the technical side and how to really find the meaning in a scene to make it more believable.”

    There was a competition between the different schools that attended the playhouse that day. Pottsville put on a production of “The Sandbox.” This was an absurdist story about people playing in a sandbox on the beach, and it has to be watched to be fully understood. Autumn said, “The schools participating in the competition were phenomenal. There was quite a variety of shows including comedic plays, dramas, musicals, and absurdism. One of my favorites was Telemar, which was a comedy tackling the struggles of being a telemarketer.”

    In addition to all of the workshops and the competition, students were able to explore the town of New Hope. The most exciting part of this was how close the town is to New Jersey. This town borders the Delaware River, and the playhouse was within walking distance of a bridge that connects the two states. Students were able to walk across this bridge and find themselves in a completely different state!