I just served, for the seventh year, as a judge at the Ohlone College High School Theatre Festival in Fremont, CA. It was two intense days of judged events in acting (comedy, drama, monologues, and lots of other categories), dance, and technical aspects including set design, costume, makeup, posters, projections, and the Build-a-Set event. This was the Festival's 22nd year, and about 850 high-school students from all over the Bay Area, and beyond, participated. There were also about 100 judges, some of whom were professional actors, directors, choreographers, and designers. As usual, they had me judging set design, poster design, and Build-a-set.
Although I spent all my time in the technical areas, it was amazing to see the energy displayed at the place, as well as the obvious preparation for the events. For the set design event, four students presented scale models of their designs, along with written concepts and additional materials such as floor plans, renderings, and even a SketchUp model on a computer. All four sets had been actually produced at the students' schools. There were nine entries in the poster design event, all of which had been used for an actual production, and some of which looked like they had been done by a professional graphic designer.
The Build-a-Set event is always a riot. A team of four or five students from one school build a set from a huge selection of available parts, furniture, and props, while a team from another school lights the same set. At the start of each session, the teams are assigned a theme at random; this year they were Sci-Fi, Fairy Tales, and Gothic Horror. Then they have fifty minutes to build a set suitable to their theme. Afterwards, two of us gave the set team a critique on the set, while two lighting designers gave the lighting team a critique on the lighting. The critiques took five minutes, and then five minutes to strike, and we'd start all over again with another two teams. On Friday there were four of these sessions back-to-back, and on Saturday there were five. The college has a really good lighting program, so the kids were able to use modern equipment and controls, including moving lights.
I can't say enough about this festival, even though each year I only see a small portion of it. It is an awesome experience. Here's a link to their web site: http://www.ohlone.edu/instr/theatredance/hstheatre.html