Gold medal winners for The Dining Room at the middle school drama festival, left to right: Molly O’Rourke Friel, Ben Landry, Joe Beebe, and Lewis Pacheco. Seated, left to right: Kate Shelton, Melanie Walker, and Rebecca Turner. (Courtesy photo)

After competing against five other middle school drama programs, Bromfield walked away with the gold medal in the Massachusetts High School Drama Guild competition Saturday, April 28, in Cronin Auditorium. Directed by Bromfield senior Aidan Kinney and drama teacher Mike McGarty, the cast was also given an ensemble award after their presentation of The Dining Room by A. R. Guerney. The cast included eighth-graders Joe Beebe, Molly O’Rourke-Friel, and Kate Shelton, and freshmen Ben Landry, Lewis Pacheco, Rebecca Turner, and Melanie Walker.

Kinney was not surprised by Bromfield’s success at the festival, he said, having watched the actors grow into their parts over the course of rehearsals: “They’re a very talented group of kids. We were able to raise our show to a standard higher than we thought possible.”

The cast, hand-picked from other Bromfield productions, was able to bring a lot of depth to a complicated play, McGarty said. The Dining Room, which features scenes from a Beacon Hill home over a span of 100 years, required that the young cast play a variety of characters at different ages. From portraying children at a birthday party to an old man planning his funeral, the play required a level of maturity that was head and shoulders above the competition, McGarty said. Kinney agreed, saying that the cast did a very plausible job with the adult themes in the play.

The ensemble award was a particular honor, McGarty said, because it is so rarely given. He referred to the cast as being part of the next wave of talent coming up through the school system, and he looks forward to working with them in the future. “It’s about funneling them into the right thing and then giving them a place to grow,” he said.

Kinney took on direction of the festival entry because of work-to-rule, which left the middle school drama program without a leader this year. It dovetailed neatly with his need to fulfill the 40 hours of community work needed for his senior project. After starting rehearsal in April, the show coalesced after numerous rehearsals and one public performance where the cast received critique from the audience. While confident going into the competition, Kinney said the cast saved its best rendition for the judges: “The actual performance was the best time it ever happened,” he said. “They really, really hit it that day.”

After graduating from Bromfield this June, Kinney will spend the summer acting in an independent film called The Dudley Town Curse: The 49th Key with another Bromfield student, junior Kelsey Marksteiner. In a perfect world he would someday work in film, he said, but for right now he is excited to learn more about his craft when he leaves this fall for NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Fresh from the awards podium, though, Kinney had great memories of his recent experience as a director. “It was all a new experience for me,” he said. “I had a lot of fun doing it.”