Sally Abdul Khalek
Feature Editor
The Texas Thespian Festival, at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center in Grapevine,Texas, is a week-long theatre festival that brings Texas high school theatre programs and clubs together. It features different kinds of workshops that allow students to learn and show their abilities whether in acting, singing, dancing, designing, creating or directing.
At the Thespian Fest, thespians compete in all aspects of theatre that are called IE.This year, a competition group at Thespian Fest consisting of Inaya Briscoe, Bayley Rios, Emaliegh Gonzalez, Emily Bayardo, and Matt Wederstrandt competed in the musical IE and qualified to nationals.
Many opportunities are provided at the thespian festival where everyone gets to participate.
“I think people enjoy the Thespian Festival for the same reason I do.You’re surrounded by others who also live and breathe theatre. Seeing shows and meeting new people at workshops is always amazing,” junior Emaliegh Gonzalez said.
Throughout the festival, many of the students bond together and create great memories that will last a lifetime.
“My most memorable experience is seeing our group musical qualify for nationals and being together in that moment,” senior Bayley Rios said.
At Thes Fest, a group of students wowed the judges with their amazing performance.
“We qualified for nationals, which means we competed against thespians from all over Texas, and now we get to advance to nationals where our group will compete against theatre students from all over the United States,” Gonzalez said.
For weeks, they have practiced non stop to perfect their performances.
“We learned the harmonies and melodies together.We figured out each other’s strengths and weaknesses to help mold our own way of performing ‘Harden My Heart/ Shadows of the Night’We had
to construct a way to convey levels and depth while performing because we were on a flat surface, so I used the choreography to accomplish that. We also spent a lot of time together so we developed a wonderful chemistry on and off the stage it wasn’t inorganic,” senior Gabrielle Gibson said.
Their unique performance is what allowed them to stand out against other groups.
“I think what’s separates us from other group musicals or even just a group of teens is that we have the mentality of winning but that’s not our main goal, our main goal is to represent our troupe and learning to work together and I can say we all had an equal amount of passion and as you can see we worked hard and now we’re here,” Rios said.
Nationals is set for Lincoln, Nebraska from June 24-29 and the students are hoping that they can go and make it far.
“I believe it’d be a blessing to travel to Nebraska and take O’Connor Theatre to the next level,” senior Inaya Briscoe said. “For our next performance, I would like to add more complex dance moves to challenge ourselves but also to perfect it further as far as vocals.”
This is a great opportunity for theater and best of luck to them in nationals.
“People enjoy Thes Fest because we meet and compete with so many people with the same fiery passion that we have for the performing arts.There are so many opportunities to take the next step in this industry as well, like the many college auditions and interviews that are held there.We meet and have the opportunity to take classes and learn from the leading people in the entertainment industry. Opportunities like those don’t happen for everyone so it’s an event that we cherish very much,” Gibson said.
