SLIDESHOW: Walsh's Student-Written Play Earns Silver Medal

Walsh Middle School students performed a student-written play called The Invisibles Saturday during the state's Middle School Drama Festival, sponsored by the Massachusetts Educational Theatre Guild.
Walsh's drama club traveled to Harvard on Saturday and earned a Silver medal for their one-act play about middle school struggles to fit in and ultimately acceptance. 

The Bromfield School in Harvard was one of five middle schools that each hosted seven drama companies on Saturday, as part of the Massachusetts Middle School Drama Festival.

While Walsh's Dramatic Paws won a Silver award, six Walsh students won individual awards, said Sheron Doucette, drama director for the middle school.

Excellence in Acting awards were given to Michael Horblit, Madi Spear and Melina List.

Students Mayara Haddad, Katie McQuail and Leah Estes won for costume design and execution.

On Friday night, Framingham's three middle school drama company's performed each of their one-act plays at Walsh Middle School.

"Friday night was truly special. Have all there middle schools together to support and cheer for each other is something we should push to happen more often," said Doucette.

"One special moment for me that night was when a young woman I didn't know came up to me on the verge of tears to ask me to thank my students for writing the play that they did. She said that if someone had performed that for her when she was in middle school, maybe her struggles in high school would have been different. We brought home a silver medal and are proud of it but that was certainly a gold medal moment."

The Invisibles deals with the difficulty of middle school life, wanting to disappear, hoping to fit in, trying to overcome obstacles and even coming out, said Doucette.

The Invisibles was the third student-scripted play Walsh Dramatic Paws has produced. Previous productions include Code Yellow and a play on the meaning of art called In the Gallery.

On Saturday, Cameron Middle School competed in Tyngsborough and earned a Gold Medal for their production of The Chronicles of Jane.

Fuller Middle School competed in Templeton on Saturday and earned a Gold medal for their production of Wait, Wait Bo Bait.

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Thanks to Cummings Photography in Framingham for photographing the night of one-act plays exclusively for Framingham Patch.