Before Thanksgiving break had even begun theater’s ITS group had reason to celebrate as more than a dozen students competed in the International Thespian Society Festival at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center and advanced to nationals which will be held in June 2019.

“Everyday in our junior varsity productions class, we went in and we worked and came up with things to make it as perfect as we could and as clean as we could,” sophomore Annelise Best said. “We want to place, but mostly I think we’re excited to just attend nationals and go to the workshops that are there so keep our number clean, keep everything clean, get better, but just be excited.”

National Individual Events (NIEs) is an educational program that offers Thespians the opportunity to receive constructive feedback on prepared theatrical material and technical designs.

“I participated in the stage management IE, or individual event,” senior Jade Garret said. “I’m pretty lucky because I am presenting my IE and I’m also doing the show so the show is my IE so that work relates to that IE. As I’m doing the show, I’m doing my IE as well. All that was left was creating my presentation and going in and doing it.”

Students qualified in various competitions including monologue, duet acting, group acting, solo musical theatre, duet musical theatre, and group musical theatre.

“As I was choreographing the piece, I really tried to look at the students that we had and their talents and what they weren’t so good at and what they were good at and I choreographed it kind of tailored to them and we rehearsed usually every B day in class in theater,” senior Maya Koch said. “Just a lot of preparation. Me cleaning a lot of the movements that they were doing and just making sure that they looked really good and performing as well as being technical.”

Inducted Thespians who qualify at their chapter conference event can participate in National Individual Events, a special program of the International Thespian Society that assesses and recognizes significant student achievement in theatre. The week long event will take place June 24-29, 2019.

“So we have class that is specifically for preparing for ITS so everyday in class we would go in and just run whatever we had and just build a building,” sophomore Sydney Lefkof said. “I really want to focus on the meaning behind, so we have a lot of movement in our piece so what I really want to focus on is the meaning behind everything, why we choose to move back and forth the way we do, so that’s really something I want to focus on before we head to nationals.”