This past week was the Showcase level of the Sears Ontario Drama Festival and it was held in my little hometown of Perth! Sears is a wonderful and exciting festival that I’ve participated in for the past 5 years not including this one and I hope to keep watching the plays as the yuears go by.

Showcase is the top tier of the festival. This level is for the plays that managed to be sent on past districts and regionals and are usually of really great quality. Perth has never hosted Showcase, as it is a very small town and Showcase is usually held in places like Toronto and Ottawa, so having it here was really exciting. I kind of wish I’d been more involved, but at the same time, I’m not in high school anymore and I’d feel pretty out of place participating in workshops and things like that.

I didn’t manage to go see the whole week, but I did go last night, which was the final night, and I saw two amazing play and one good play. I was a little surprised by the good play because though it was excellently written and well-directed, the actors were, well, lacking. They had their golden moments, but in general I was a little surprised they were at showcase considering this is primarily an acting competition. It wasn’t bad though, and I enjoyed it. The other two plays were wonderful and I gave them standing ovations, as did most of the audience. They were very well executed comedies, one of which was mostly done in jibberish, which doesn’t sound good, but it REALLY was.

Another nice thing about going last night was that there was an alumni room for PDCI. It was full of photo albums, old costumes, newspaper clippings, awards and videos. It was unexpectedly emotional thinking about all of my drama experience from grade 9 till grade 12x. I got to see me and all of my fellow dramateers as little grade 9s working our way up to the top of the drama chain. My old Six War Years costume was there too. That was my grade 9 Sears show and possibly my favourite.

Before going there, I was worried about going back to PDCI, running into people and making awkward small talk, but in the end, I’m glad I went. It was a nice walk through memory lane.