YARMOUTH – Following recent tradition, Freeport High School put up a home-produced one-act play against the likes of Shakespeare and Kipling in the Maine Drama Festival finals last Saturday at Yarmouth High School, and “UnHappily Ever After” was good enough to finish fourth out of the 10 top Class B schools competing.

Taken in a broader context, the one-act play, written by Molly Brown and Kelsey Grant, was fourth best among the 91 Class B schools in the state. Host Yarmouth won with “Josephine’s Stories,” by Rudyard Kipling.

Gorham and Falmouth finished 1-2 in the Class A competition, which is for high schools with at least 525 students.

Both Grant and the Tim Ryan, the Freeport High School drama director, said that the weeks of competition were trying yet satisfying. Freeport won regional competition on March 15 in Rockland to qualify for the state finals.

“This experience has definitely been the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life,” Grant said. “At some points it made me go from being happy, to sad, to mad within a matter of minutes. But I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world. Not only was this the hardest, but it was the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

Grant credited the entire cast for a successful run.

“I could not have asked for a better group of people to work with and I will miss every single one of them,” she said.

“It was a long haul,” Ryan said. “But you all would have been very proud of all the 55-plus FHS students who participated. Their performance was amazing. It was really very close. When you’re on that level, they’re all pretty good.”

Daniel Sinclair, who played The Mirror, and Dalton Chapman, who played the part of the Grumpy Miner, made All-Festival cast. It was the third acting award for Chapman, a school record.

Brown and Grant won Judge’s Commendations for Outstanding Creative Collaboration.

Daniel Sinclair won recognition for Outstanding Sound Design, Sommer Cassidy for Outstanding Special Effects and the character of the Miner for makeup. The entire cast won for Outstanding Use of

Space and the stage crew for Outstanding Transitions.

Ryan said that Freeport and Mount View High School of Thorndike are the only two schools in the state that perform school-written plays.

“We’ve been doing it for about 10 years now so it is a big tradition in not only the town of Freeport, but since school consolidation the entire (Regional School Unit) 5, as well,” he said. “We were the first school that had a student-written Maine play go to the New England Drama Festival in 2008. Since then, our goal is to be the first school to win a Maine state championship at the festivals with a student-written play.”

Brown and Grant wrote their play as an adaptation to a German classic.

“It is a drama that is a reboot/sequel to ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,’” Ryan said. “The show has a cast and crew numbering over 50 students.”

In the “UnHappily Ever After” version,” the queen’s subjects are afraid of her until they learn she was Snow White, who had fought a tragedy in her life, the death of a child.

Grant said she likes seeing her work “come to life” when the play hits the stage.

“It is such a wonderful feeling seeing the cast make mine and Molly’s ideas become a reality. I came up with this play originally in my creative writing class. I had no idea it would’ve turned out to be something so much larger than a two-page essay.”

Ethan Whited, who plays the king in the Freeport High School Drama Club production of “UnHappily Ever After,” and Sarah Watts, who plays the queen, stare at a fallen mannequin. The mannequin represents Snow White, the queen’s former self, in the student-written play. The students performed the play Saturday at the Maine Drama Festival finals. Ethan Whited, who plays the king, points sternly during the Freeport High School Drama Club presentation of “UnHappily Ever After,” a student-written play that won the Maine Drama Festival regional competition on March 15 in Rockland, qualifying it for the state finals last Saturday at Yarmouth High School. “UnHappily Ever After” was good enough to finish fourth out of the 10 top Class B schools competing. Shown here in back of Whited are, from left, Evan Tims and Lilly Smith and seated, Olivia Watts. At left is Alexis Erlandson.