I think that it is an important subject for this age group.”

Cindy Racinski, St. Andrew's School

PORTSMOUTH — No one can ever accuse the young thespians at St. Andrew’s School of keeping it light.

Last Friday, a group of students from the private Barrington school presented a play based on the book and popular Netflix show, “13 Reasons Why,” at the Portsmouth Free Public Library.

The book, by Jay Asher, tells the story of high school student Hannah Baker and details 13 reasons why she committed suicide, along with the stories of her classmates with whom she interacted before her death.

Students created a condensed version of the book and turned it into a play featuring what the actors thought were the most important events from the novel and the most compelling reasons why Hannah Baker decided to end her life. 

“I think that it is an important subject for this age group,” said Cindy Racinski, who teaches the St. Andrew’s students who put on the play. 

“As an educator I am seeing a lot of cutting happening, especially amongst young teenage girls, and I know myself and I’ve experienced students that have committed suicide and I think it was our way as a summer camp to tackle some of that.” 

The cast of the play was small, featuring only six actors to play all the roles. To make up for this, the students decided to adapt some characters and condense them into one role. In the future, Ms. Racinski said she hopes to expand the play to help tell the whole story.

“We’re hoping to continue and find the additional actors that we need to build the script a little bit more, because there’s more stories to tell, and take it back out into a library series and into church groups,” she said.

“Youth groups really want it in the church come the fall to help initiate some of the discussion that needs to happen that I think adults find very difficult to approach with this age group,” Ms. Racinski continued. “We are trying to utilize this as a way to start communication.”