The lights dim as show tunes blare through the room, thousands of theatre kids singing and dancing as the energy in the room rises to an ultimate high. A huge inflatable duck dances across the stage as the audience settles down and prepare for an exhilarating and busy next four days.
Texas Thespians is the largest theatre chapter in the nation and hosts two state festivals every year. Bowie’s Starlight Theatre Company (STC) attended the thespian festival (ThesFest) in Grapevine, TX for the first time this year, representing Troupe 4361. Directors Kade Lasseigne and Marco Bazan, as well as assistant principal Christina Burbank took nineteen students to the festival this year from Nov. 19-22.
“I have always felt that the STC should be going to Texas Thespians,” Lasseigne said. “Not only because this program is so impressive, but because of the training side of it all. A good artist is always learning to shape their craft and I felt that these students would grow and benefit from the exposure to other theatre programs.”
Every student who attended had the opportunity to compete in a ‘thespy,’ which is an event where students compete against other students from across the state with the goal of nationally qualifying. There are performance and technical categories that can be completed alone, in pairs, or in groups. People can dance, sing, design costumes, and much more.
“I want to pursue acting professionally so I wanted to strengthen and refine my monologues as much as possible,” senior Noah Enriquez-Torres said. “Because of this I selected one comedic monologue and one dramatic monologue for my thespy and then created a transition movement that helped me shift from one monologue to the other smoothly.”
The festival took place at the Gaylord Texan Convention Center. Surrounded by more than 8000 other attendees, students were required to pay close attention and balance workshops with the time it might take them to prepare for their thespy.
“I had been working on my song for a long time and I didn’t want to spend the day stressing about my piece, so I spent the morning going to workshops,” senior Olivia Nanda said. “About an hour before I warmed up my voice and after performing my piece, I felt really confident because I had really fine tuned my piece.”
When competing, judges are not comparing competitors to each other, but scoring them against a 20 point rubric, broken evenly into four categories. If competitors received a score between 18 and 20 from each judge then they will qualify nationally.
“For me personally a national qualifier would be someone who gave a great performance and has room for improvement,” Lasseigne said. “In a main-stage callback I was looking for someone who gave an outstanding performance that has little room for improvement.”
When students were not competing they had the opportunity to attend workshops, with over eight time slots a day, and more than 20 options each time slot. All workshops were first come, first serve, including directing, acting, dancing, singing, tech theatre, and more.
“I did a lot of dance workshops and it felt really freeing to move without worrying about who was watching,” Enriquez Torres said. “My favorite workshop was definitely the “Dancing Through Life” choreography.”
Seniors interested in pursuing theatre or musical theatre professionally had the opportunity to send in a video audition of themselves which got dispersed to all the colleges attending ThesFest. Over 30 colleges participated at the ThesFest giving seniors the chance to be seen by multiple colleges and start getting considered for callbacks.
“It’s not hard to add to the to-do list of going to ThesFest and it gives you exposure and hopefully scholarship offers,” Lasseigne said. “This allows the colleges to really watch and take time to think about who they want to call back.”
For students seeking out more competitive opportunities, there are competitive events exclusive to Texas ThesFest. This year sixteen out of the eighteen members of Bowie’s troupe competed in the lip sync battle Texas only event, which had a theme of 20 on 20. Seniors Genevieve Downing and Alice Jefferies choreographed the lip sync battle with the assistance of sophomore Mila Maxon. The lip sync team competed against over 80 other schools and came out in first place with a perfect score.
“Putting together a piece quickly was definitely chaotic, but I think the one thing that kept it together was everyone’s professionalism,” Downing said. “I always love seeing my vision come to life and when our troupe told us we won first place we all started cheering in the cafeteria.”
On the final day of ThesFest, the closing ceremony was very exciting for Bowie’s troupe this year. All members of the lip sync performed on stage in front of about 4,000 students alongside the best of the best pieces from callbacks.
“I was having so much fun performing with my friends and it’s an experience I will never forget,” Downing said. “I am super proud to have shown my choreography and it was the perfect ending to the festival.”
