Once upon a Thursday, my friend Abby Kurth (Iowa STO) and I drove up with our director, William Myatt, to Cedar Falls, IA. Abby slept all three hours and, of course, had her picture taken many times as shown below.
Once there, I helped the Iowa STO board organize, traveled to the campus festival location to stuff registration bags and boxes, and came back to the hotel conference rooms to create IE Judge goodie bags and to vote on various scholarship winners.
Here is the wonderful and ever-silly Iowa STO board hard at work.
(From left to right, Chester Pelsang, Katie Savely, Emilee Cruchelow, Danny Zanger, Abby Kurth, and Joshua Randolph)
After Thursday's hard work, we were ready for #IAThesFest14 to start Friday morning.
The opening ceremony got the freshly-off-the-school-vehicle thespians very excited to get their weekend started! The first mainstage was "The Laramie Project", a well-done and thought-provoking play.
Following this I had the privilege of teaching the Leadership Luncheon.
The students got a chance to participate in activities, find out their "leadership personality", and eat some lunch with fellow thespians. I loved seeing others enthusiastic about leadership AND meeting the candidates for the 2015 STO board.
Because this was my home state's conference, I participated in two events--Solo Musical Theatre and Group Improv. I actually placed third in state for Solo Musical Theatre and qualified to go to International Thespian Festival with it (Yay!)
Friday night ended with a nice University of Northern Iowa dinner and "Bob: A Life in Five Acts", which is one of the funniest shows I've seen in a long time. A great way to end the first day of festival.
Saturday held many surprises. Not only did over ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE attend my "NAPS" workshop, but it also SNOWED almost two inches. I'm dreaming of a white...Thespian Festival?
I was so ecstatic to see over 100 thespians interested in #NAPS. They learned how plain and simple advocacy can be, shared advocacy stories from their personal lives, and even acted out a couple improv scenes from The Advocacy Game.
Overall, Iowa Thespian Festival is run some extraordinarily organized, creative, and kind people. Between tech challenge, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS auction, 'Minute to Give It' competition between boys and girls, and the IE Showcase, there was never a dull moment.
Is this heaven? No, this is #IAThesFest14.