![Last Wednesday, the Wayland School Committee gathered to discuss a number of topics regarding the health curriculum and Innovation Career Pathway course. Another large topic of conversation was the ways to potentially mitigate distracting cell phone usage. "These [phones] are going to distract your learning and social relationships," Superintendent David Fleishman said. "That's concrete right there."](https://waylandstudentpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-04-at-9.49.31 PM-1200x886.png)
![Troy Hoyt finishes the Boston Marathon, running for the Hoyt Foundation. T. Hoyt is the son of Hoyt Foundation CEO Russ Hoyt.
“[Running a marathon] might seem like a big thing, when it’s presented to you at first, but if you break it up and just keep telling yourself, “Yes, you can,” you can start chipping away at it. And before you know it, you’ll be running the whole 26 miles, and you won’t even think twice about it.” T. Hoyt said.](https://waylandstudentpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/C36E8761-1CBB-452E-9DF2-543EF7B1095E_1_105_c.jpeg)
After spending hours at rehearsal, singing and reciting lines, the Wayland High School Theatre Ensemble (WHSTE) seniors closed their high school theatre careers at the annual Senior Directed One Acts. On Wednesday, June 11, WHSTE performed the Senior Directed One acts at the WHS auditorium.
The Senior Directed One Acts are an annual tradition of WHSTE. Seniors that are a part of WHSTE write and direct their own 10 minute plays. Freshmen, sophomore and juniors are casted as actors. There were a total of eight performances, with 25 underclassmen actors participating in the acts.
WHSTE director and dramatic arts teacher Aidan O’Hara usually directs plays performed by WHSTE, but the Senior Directed One Acts allows the seniors to take charge of their own performances.
“[The seniors in WHSTE] are amazing,” O’Hara said. “We have a very large active group [of seniors] that have left quite a mark on WHSTE and Wayland High School, so they will be missed.”
For the Senior Directed One Acts, O’Hara usually tries to encourage students who aren’t a part of WHSTE to audition.
Among eight of those plays, six were originals, meaning that seniors wrote the plays. They created the plot and the lines.
Senior George Stafford wrote a play on actors portraying detectives called “A Gritty Play About Detectives Solving a Crime.” Yes, you heard that right. The premise of Stafford’s play is that a group of three actors recite their lines as the police they play. Eventually it turns into the actors complaining about the script the director (Stafford) wrote for them. Stafford wrote his play in one sitting and never revisited the script.
“I thought what went well with [my play] is that it is just a self deprecating show about how much the director sucks,” Stafford said.
Senior Alex Irwin wrote a play called “(Write Title Later).” The title is a play on one of the characters, Jacob, a lazy writer writing a play for school. Irwin chose this title because Jacob is too lazy to write a title in the play. It follows the story of two screenwriters realizing they are in a play themselves. Throughout the play, main characters John and Jacob grapple with the question of whether or not they’re self aware if they were written by a different person.
Irwin wrote “(Write Title Later) for the Massachusetts Educator Theatre Guild (METG) screenwriting competition. The play is inspired by reading Shakespeare’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” in English class. Irwin wrote his play over the course of a week.
“For years I have been inspired by the concept of simulation theory,” Irwin said. “With simulation theory we often think about a futuristic concept. In this one [play] I wanted to play with the idea that the characters themselves are in a simulation written by another person.”
While this marks the closure for some WHSTE seniors theater careers, some seniors are continuing their theatre career in college. WHSTE senior Isa Fuentes will attend Northeastern NYC and Marymount Manhattan College to receive a BFA in musical theatre. Irwin will study economics and theatre at New York University.
“WHSTE will and always will be the highlight of my time in high school,” Irwin said. “I hope to keep in touch with the people I’ve met in this program for the rest of my life. The experiences that we [WHSTE actors] have all had have not only shifted us as actors and performers, but also to be kind and passionate people ”
