Student-directed play showcased in youth mental health event

Less than an hour before showtime, eight Concord High School girls helped put tiny braids in each other’s hair, every so often weaving in baby pink beads. With nervous energy, they winced and laughed as they ate Sour Strips candy.

Seniors Holly Keenan and Maddie Short, the student writers and directors of the play “Cabin Thoughts,” emerged wearing floor-length floral dresses. The eight girls who would be acting in the 30-minute play showered Keenan and Short with compliments.

The type of friendship displayed backstage was something Short and Keenan wanted to highlight in the production, along with the mental health struggles girls face all the time.

“We both just think it’s a message that is super important for the community to hear, especially the experiences that young teenage girls go through are kind of unique and pretty hard, and it just doesn’t get as much light as it should,” Short said.

The seniors debuted the show in December as part of the annual Senior One Acts at Concord High. On Wednesday, it got a revival at the Bank of NH Stage as part of a mental health event partnership with Merrimack Valley High School and Bow High School.

Concord High senior Maggie Hall, who started the school’s mental health awareness club, wanted to host a community-wide event to showcase teen mental health. She thought her friends’ play would be the perfect vehicle to exemplify that struggle.

“I think having it be student-run [is] better for other adolescents who are facing these things to hear it from somebody who is around their same age also facing these things,” Hall said. “I think it’s also important for parents and other members of the community to learn about those things too: How can they help adolescents, or even their own peers and adults, who are facing these problems as well?”

“Cabin Thoughts” takes place during the last days at a summer camp, just before school starts again. In between scenes of playful teasing and telling ghost stories, each of the eight girls in the show had a private monologue with the audience, sharing a secret they’ve been keeping: an eating disorder, academic pressure, domestic violence, depression.

At the end, one of the characters wakes up from a nightmare and tells all her cabinmates how she had been bullied at school. One by one, all the characters opened up about the problems they initially hid.

“I definitely think it’s bringing awareness to it, and also just showing that it’s okay if you’re not okay, if you have these things going on, because there will always be somebody or some people who will be there and will help you through it,” said Maddie Robert, a freshman at Concord High and an actor in the play.

The first performance in December had to be shown in the high school’s band room because of ongoing repairs to the auditorium’s ceiling. Neither the actors nor the directors thought it would get a second wind, but once they were invited to the event, everyone was excited to perform on an actual stage.

The girls had a short window to practice and had to find time in the lulls of the school day. Aside from some tweaks to the script, all it took was remembering the lines they practiced for two months straight last semester.

“It makes it feel more like a performance,” said freshman Chana Goldwasser, another actor in the show. “It makes it feel more real compared to being in a band room, especially
because I think most of us have classes in that band room.”

After the play, five Merrimack Valley High School students shared a presentation they created about the Youth Risk Behavioral Survey. The national, optional survey monitors several risk factors that lead to death or disability among high schoolers, including drug use, dietary behaviors and mental health.

Merrimack Valley participated in a program called “Getting to the Why” that facilitates students’ review of the survey data. The students shared that 30.5% of their classmates reported their mental health was not good most of the time, and that 19.2% seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year.

In the presentation, they showed ways they are engaging students both in and out of school to promote mental health awareness, such as setting up an Easter egg hunt in the high school halls and sponsoring a color run.

“We’re here just trying to make a community impact, and also spread awareness for what ‘Getting to Why’ is to community members and get their thoughts, not just students and faculty perspectives,” said Emily Baca, a junior at Merrimack Valley.

Short and Keenan were glad to have a second chance at performing the show, and were encouraged by their theater teacher Clint Klose to take it even further. One of their favorite parts of the process was the relationships built between all the girls.

“Because we as a cast have gotten so close, I think that really helps build the girls camp vibe that we were going for,” Keenan said. “It’s not only strengthened their acting, but also the story, I think, because it has more weight to it.”