By Ethan Walshe
Editor-in-Chief
Everyone has a passion. Some enjoy sports, art, or creative outlets, but often times people don’t get to see their passions evolve. Westford Academy senior Zack Dictakis has taken his love for writing and transformed it into a full length play titled The Window Guy, which he also directed. The play ran from Wednesday, January 30 to Friday, February 1 after months of writing, staging and direction.
Dictakis has been involved in Westford Academy Theatre Arts for a number of years. Originally, he did not have any interest in performance; only an interest in writing and making movies. He signed up for an Acting I class his sophomore year with the aim of having a “directorial perspective.”
“Little did I know we would have to end up acting in Acting I, big surprise there. Because two weeks into the course it was like ‘get a monologue for tomorrow’ and I was like ‘but I just wanted to see what good acting looked like.’ And ever since then, once I found out about the Black Box and those things, I wanted to direct,” said Dictakis.
Dictakis has always had an interest in writing which has evolved over a number of years. Coming into high school, he had a great interest in writing movie scripts, as he wished to direct his own films and thought that writing the script was also a logical step. He has written numerous works, including an 85 page script for a movie which he wrote with the assistance of theatre arts teacher Michael Towers, which has since been tabled.
His original interest in writing for film spurred Dictakis towards playwriting. During his junior year he took the playwriting class offered at WA to help focus his interest and fine tune his skill. In this class he wrote the first draft of what become The Window Guy, a five page script titled Heights.
“I signed up for the class because I thought it would be cool, because Mr. Towers had always told me ‘I don’t know anything about writing movies but I can share what I know about writing a play … I took the class and that was the best experience I’ve ever had in school. It was the most exceptional thing I’ve ever been a part of,” said Dictakis.
As said, Dictakis has spent a majority of his high school career working towards directing a play in the Black Box. It was only after he had applied to direct a play he had fallen in love with – titled [SIC] – that he found out he would have to write his own work. WA graduate Jeff Collard was the first student to do this last year, when he wrote and directed his own play, Growing Pains, which Dictakis assistant directed. This has since been worked into the general season of WATA, and Dictakis is the latest iteration.
Dictakis has what can be described as a very organic writing style. He lets his thoughts simply flow out of him as he writes, in a fluid sort of train of thought.
“How I write is, I have no idea what I’m writing. I just try to write back-and-forth truthful responses and eventually it gets somewhere, gets somewhere else, gets somewhere else,” he said.
When it comes to directing his own work, Dictakis took a very hands off approach to The Window Guy. One of his main goals was to see how much could be put on the actors themselves to interpret and portray the work.
In fact, he only directly blocked the closing scene of the play and one fight scene. This hands-off approach was aided further by the intentional lack of both stage direction and punctuation in the script.
“Zack had a very interesting approach to directing … He let us feel out the world, and live in the world. This unique approach gave us the opportunity to make our own choices every time we did the show, which gave us the freedom to create the world differently every time,” said sophomore Sam Nudler, who played Eddie in The Window Guy.
This directing style also allowed Dictakis to take a backseat and view his work from afar, to see how anyone who read it could interpret it.
“I feel like working with your own play is a really difficult thing to do, but he did it really well,” said Dictakis’ assistant director, junior Tanvi Verma. “He was able to see the separation between director and playwright, and he could view his work objectively. And that’s important when it comes to directing a play, I think, because if you’re trying to direct and you’re still stuck in playwriting mode, you’re probably not going to let your work speak for itself.”
As a senior, Dictakis will be leaving WA come summer. He wishes to continue writing, directing, and acting for the rest of his life. His top choice is Emerson College, which has an ideal program for his interests. He also has considered taking a gap year to explore his interest in writing and directing further.
Dictakis is more than pleased with how his work has come to life. He believes he has something to show for his hard work and thanks to his team, The Window Guy became a personal success.
“This has been my dream for the past two years. When I was originally selected to write and direct my own play I didn’t know what opportunity I’d been given, I thought I might have been shorthanded. Now I realize this is the best thing that I could have possibly gotten out of this because it’s what I want, what I needed. So, I am very grateful for the opportunity I was given,” said Dictakis.
