For the second time since 1999, Permian High School theater students will be competing in the International Thespian Festival at Indiana University in Bloomington in late June 2024.
Eight students in Head Theatre Director Micaela Grenier’s class achieved this goal.
“I’m very proud of our competitors, including those who didn’t qualify to move on at this time. These students had to prepare their competition pieces on top of their busy schedules for school, home, other productions PHS Theatre did this semester and any other activities they’re involved in,” Grenier said.
“This is just the second year since 1999 that our students attended and competed at the Texas Thespians festival. Last year, we had just five students compete and two national qualifiers. This year, we had 13 entries and eight qualifiers!” Grenier said.
The next step is to work on fundraising to make sure the students have a chance to compete at nationals, she added.
The group includes juniors Brooklyn King and Madelyn Linville, seniors Hope Joyce, Jay Dean and Megan Lowry, and sophomores Wade Harvey, Colton Lewis and Jonah Davisson.
In addition to Grenier, Reymundo Montoya is the technical theatre director and the students said they played an important role in their success.
The state competition was in Grapevine in November 2023.
Lowry said she heard a rumor that the list of people going to nationals were going to be sent out on a particular night, so she stayed up all night waiting for it.
“I had used my friend’s phone because mine wouldn’t open the link. I ended up being number 958 on the list. I had to make her screenshot it and send it to me so I could send it to my family. My friends had to cover my mouth because I started screaming,” Lowry said.
Dean said he also found out he’d made it to nationals late at night and he was surprised.
“I’m pretty new to theater. I’ve only been doing it for like two years and whenever I was competing, there was some real, serious talent and that I wasn’t doubting that but the caliber of actors there was immense so I was kind of iffy on the idea of even getting (to) Nationals so whenever I actually did find out it was a sense of achievement that I’ve never really had before,” he added.
Davisson said he also was caught unawares when he was notified.
“I was on my phone just playing a game and then my friend Caleb leans over and he’s like, Oh, hey, you made it,” Davisson said.
He didn’t know what his friend was talking about, so Davisson looked up the list and saw he’d made it to nationals.
Linville didn’t think she had made it because the original list didn’t include her, but then she got a call from Grenier who told Linville there was an error in the tabulations and she had made it.
“It was very confusing because I had just gone through all the emotions of not making it, but I was very proud of myself because I had to choreograph my whole piece by myself which was kid of hard. It is just a sense of pride, I guess,” Linville added.
Joyce said preparation for Nationals means finding whatever you did to get to this point, whether it was a song, monologue or stage managing, and “really perfecting it” so they put their best foot forward at nationals.
Harvey, Lewis and Davisson performed a comedy at state.
Lewis said he feels like finding something within themselves to bring out the inner character helped them make it to Nationals.
“I also feel like it could have something to do with the genre because whenever we were there, every single play was really sad and ours was the only funny one so everybody liked it. I feel like that might have had some part in it,” Lewis added.
Harvey said he’s pretty sure what the judges were looking for was the potential they had as actors, “not how much you aced it, but how much you could potentially ace it.”
There’s a lot of individual work that will go into preparing for nationals, but they will have after-school tutorials, voice lessons and time set aside to work with the directors.
“It’s really a lot of by-yourself work,” Joyce said.
