The Freeport High School Drama Club will present a one-act drama on the Holocaust as it hosts the Regional One-Act Drama Festival on Friday and Saturday, March 6-7.

The play is entitled “What Sunlight Doesn’t Touch,” written by seniors Sarah Watts and Evan Tims. Watts also directed.

In addition to Freeport, competing high schools in Class B will be Yarmouth, Baxter Academy, Merriconeag Waldorf School and Casco Bay. Edward Little, Gray New Gloucester, Cape Elizabeth and Lewiston will compete in Class A, also hosted at FHS.

Tim Ryan, drama club director, said Freeport often hosts the regionals.

“We are always excited to host the one-act festivals,” he said. “The upcoming festival will be our fifth time hosting. We will have hosted four regional festivals and one state final. We are particularly excited to be bringing the world premiere of our very unique play to the festival.”

Several high schools have been producing student-written productions for the Maine Principals’ Association One-Act competition.

“During this time, especially during the early years of our student-written program, students would approach me about producing an original play about the Holocaust,” Ryan said. “I always nixed the idea, since the reasoning was to do a heavy drama for the sake of being competitive and winning. To me at the time it seemed like it was in bad taste and/or not for the right reasons. I personally was not comfortable producing a Holocaust play just for the sake of trying to win a festival or two.

“Then over the years I would see various productions at festivals that dealt with the Holocaust. In particular after viewing one such Holocaust play in Windham last year, I started thinking that we could really do a great job with the subject if we had the right script. If we were to produce one then it would have to be very different from the Holocaust plays that already existed.”

Ryan said it was by sheer coincidence that Watts approached him last April to pitch her original story idea.

“She, like myself, had always been interested in the subject of the Holocaust and the whys of how something that horrific could happen,” Ryan said. “Her pitch to tell and educate the public about this event was very intriguing. Our story is told from opposing point of views, the victims and the Nazi side. You never see that, until now. If someone were to walk in a Hollywood studio office and pitched a movie telling the Holocaust event from the Nazi point of view, they would probably be thrown out of the office.”

Watts said that the play she and Tims wrote tells a unique story.

“Learning more about the perspectives I wrote from in this play has been incredibly interesting and very educational,” Watts said. “Directing what I wrote has also been a captivating process because I get to watch my words and characters come to life through the talent of the actors. The content is definitely heavy and has been something we’ve had to ease people into, but in the end, we just want to tell some stories of those involved in the Holocaust and hope that the show serves as an educational experience for both the cast and crew as well as the audience.”

The story is based on actual people and events, but the main plot line is fictional, Ryan said.

The actors include Olivia Watts, who plays Holocaust survivor Gerta Klein; Lilly Smith, who plays female guard leader Irma Grese; Maya Pierce, who plays survivor Rivka Yosselevscka; Josef Biberstein, who plays trial prosecutor Col. Cass; Noah Brown, who plays trial prosecutor Dr. Gilbert; and Hunter Thompson, who plays notorious death camp doctor and Grese’s love interest, Josef Mengele.

“I play a lead, the Holocaust survivor,” said Watts’ younger sister, Olivia. “Being able to have a part in this production has been very rewarding. Because of the play’s content, I had to really take this seriously, while being able to take a step back and tell myself that all these events actually happened. Looking at the Holocaust as a whole is a bit incomprehensible. Having to put myself in Gerta’s shoes, feel her emotions, made it more personal, but I was able to understand just how frightening and horrendous it was from a direct encounter. It was a real learning experience.”

Regional Class B winners will compete March 20 and 21 at Stearns High School in Millinocket for the state title.

Student playwrights Evan Tims and Sarah Watts created the Holocaust-themed one-act, “What Sunlight Doesn’t Touch.”  Photo by Betsy PetersFreeport High School students, from left, Noah Brown, Lilly Smith and Claudia Labbe, rehearse “What Sunlight Doesn’t Touch,” the school’s Regional One-Act Drama Festival entry. Freeport High hosts the festival Friday and Saturday. Photo by Betsy Peters