Celebrating the fabric of community with ‘The Hundred Dresses’

Weston High School’s theater department is back on stage next week with a story about schoolyard bullying and standing up for community members, even when they come from another country.

“A play about acceptance, especially for immigrants, felt particularly important, and has only felt more important since I chose it last spring,” Anne Isaacs, director of the school’s theater program, said.

“The Hundred Dresses,” a Mary Hall Surface adaptation of Eleanor Estes’s book, follows a 1938 classroom of 10-year-olds and their treatment of Wanda Petronski, a Polish immigrant who wears the same faded dress every day. She swears that she has a hundred dresses at home, which draws the ire of her classmates. When Wanda stops coming to school, her classmate Maddie Reeves tries to make up for her treatment of Wanda and others in her community.

As the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement continue to dominate national headlines, Sofie Forsythe, a senior playing Maddie, said the production was timely.

“It’s impactful doing this show right now. These characters are dealing with concepts of immigration and how people are different. There are adults and people my age who can’t grasp that,” Forsythe said. “But the show ends on a positive note. We can change and the people around us can change.”

While immigration is treated differently now than in the 1930s, Duncan Oberg, a senior playing Wanda’s father, noted that news coverage has had a presence in rehearsal.

“I think us being in this time affects how we treat it,” he said. “If we were doing this 10 years ago, the choices we make would be different.”

In addition to the national relevance, students have connected to the script through their own experiences. As they rehearsed, Forsythe and Oberg both said there have been many discussions about what it was like to be a child trying to make sense of the world.

“It’s especially interesting to step back into the shoes of a 10 year old,” Forsythe said.

The show, which is geared to young audiences, opens on Feb. 26. Isaacs said the performance is an opportunity for both the audience and her students to work through ideas about how to treat others in a multicultural community.

“As a theater educator, what can I do?” she asked. “I can do theater that tells an important story with themes the students can investigate.”

The show runs Thursday, Feb. 26, at 7 p.m. and Friday, Feb. 27 at 6 p.m. at Weston High School. Tickets are $10 for general admission and free for children under 12, and can be bought online or at the door. The show will also be a part of Massachusetts High School Drama Festival at Joseph Case High School in Swansea at 10 a.m. on Feb. 28.

Editor’s note: The time of Friday’s show has been changed from the original.