Student Voices: Competition

Episode 160: Student Voices: Competition The topic this week is competition. Lindsay interviews four groups of students who competed with scenes at the Florida State Thespian Festival. How does competition performing differ than being on stage in a regular show? How do you choose a scene? How do you deal with nerves? These students share personal experience, their expertise and their best competition tips. Show Notes How to Find Monologue For Auditions and Competitions Taking Students to Competition Celebrate The Competition Preparing for Competition Part One Preparing for Competition Part Two Preparing for Competition Part Three Body Body Blue Sky Lies The Big Lie Episode Transcript Welcome to TFP – The Theatrefolk Podcast – the place to be for Drama teachers, Drama students, and Theatre educators everywhere. I’m Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Hello! I hope you're well. Thanks for listening! This is Episode 160. You can find any links to this episode in the show notes which are at Theatrefolk.com/episode160. Okay. The topic for today is competition. We go to a lot of conferences and festivals – mostly in the States – where students don’t just compete with one-acts or full-lengths; there are a lot of individual event competitions – monologues, duets, ensembles, musicals, set design, costuming, so much more! I’ve judged these events at various festivals and the whole process can look quite nerve-racking, you know? You have to get up in front of sometimes three judges who are all sitting at a table, who, as soon as you start acting, they start writing. I think it’s probably really hard to act and be judged at the same time. One of the bigger festivals for these individual event competitions is the Florida State Thespian Festival. When you walk through the convention center on any given day of the festival, every corner is filled with students practicing, singing, preparing to compete. The energy is just bouncing off the walls with people waiting to perform, waiting to find out their score, crying sometimes when they find out their score – or, you know, the opposite – screaming in elation. I had the pleasure of seeing a number of my scenes performed this year in competition and I thought it would be interesting to interview some of the students about their experience. We’re going to listen to four groups who all competed with scenes of mine. First group is Brandon Craft, Cameron Logan, and Jordan Capps. They used my play “Blue Sky.” Hannah Groves and Chapel Darley performed a scene from a play called “Body Body.