Hello Fellow Thespians!

It's Ayla Sullivan here, your Freshman Rep, and I know it's pretty late, but I wanted to post about the Nationals experience from the Jr. Thespian perspective. This year was my first time at Nationals and I was very privileged to qualify to go with several other Jr. Thespians such as Danielle Samler, Victoria Capraro, Jimmy Bruenger, Julia Shultz, and Kiana English. It was a big year for Jr. Thespians and, as a whole, we learned a lot about ourselves as individuals and actors. 

I was able to go to some really rewarding workshops including: Neutral Mask, Auditioning for Stage and Colleges, Sketch Comedy Writing, Intro to Musical Theatre Writing, Beginning Hip Hop, and more I can't seem to remember. I heard a lot of other Jr. Thespians went to a directing class that was very eye opening and helpful to understand both the directing and acting aspects of theatre.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Nationals was a very positive experience for us younger folks, though it was tough to find students from other schools relatively close to our age, as the majority of attendees are either incoming seniors or incoming freshman in college.  The interesting thing was how regionally diverse the troupes were. The most common area troupes were from was Texas, at least ten troupes were from there, and southern states in general. I met a few people from the East coast and, believe it or not, England and Australia. It was funny because I sat near an Australian troupe for dinner and they all were, successfully, doing Southern accents. It was awesome.    

  I think all of us who performed our IEs can unanimously agree that all the judges were incredibly intimidating. It was one of the most frightening auditioning experiences of my life, but I'm glad I had the opportunity. I was pleased with my scores, and agreed with all my critiques. Overall, I feel all the performing Jr. Thespians really appreciated their scores. The main consensus was that we were all honored to even be at the festival, so any score was taken with gratitude. My personal favorite part of the IE process was that all performers got a nifty little certificate signed by the head of the EdTA and a cool flag sort of thing you could put at the bottom of your badge. I know, I'm weird. 

The night events at Nationals were also my favorite. At first, I was very excited about the themed dances, but, once you get there, you realize it's similar to dancing in a sweaty armpit. You're around lots of flesh, lots of sweat, it's humid, and you feel like you're going to pass out. I could only go one night. The other nights, I supported DSA's newest folk sensation ClusterFolk with a bunch of others from our troupe. By the way, they were trending on Twitter for awhile and their Facebook page has over 100 likes! Go ClusterFolk! 

The best night event, in my opinion, had to be the student auction, which, from any outsider who wasn't obsessed with the leads in the mainstage shows, seemed like a mild form of human trafficking. Anyway, I couldn't afford to bid too much to get the male lead in DSA's voted favorite mainstage show, The Drowsy Chaperone, so I ended up paying the last five dollars in the winning group, just so I could have dinner with him. It was...magical to say the least. Austin Allen and one of our new Outreach Officers, Ryan Maltz, teamed up to bid on The Drowsy Chaperone's female lead. I don't think I have ever seen Austin so giddy. It was a proud moment for all of us. 

Well, those are my highlights from Nationals. I tried not to talk too much about anything Samie and Nicki already discussed, but I would like to say that the festival was a really exciting, fun, and educational adventure. I would highly encourage any lover of theatre to become a thespian so that they could be apart of this. :)