Drama Competition:Trumbauer 2007

Today was the Alabama District 1 Trumbauer Theater Festival competition; this was the first time I'd been since DD's senior year four years ago. The rules have changed a bit... I think I understand why, but I'm a little disappointed all the same. They dropped the oral adjudication after each performance; I really missed that. I learned so much in years past about theater and performing just from watching the plays and listening to the judges!

Another rule change had to do with how many plays advance from each district. The one-act play DS's drama class did ended up scoring an overall superior rating, but they did not advance to the state level; only the top three plays go now, instead of all the 'superiors'. That was disappointing, but the plain truth is that the drama program at the magnet school fell apart after the founding director retired two years ago, and this year is the first year they've hired a serious director to replace him and begin the rebuilding process. They started from scratch on August 8, and kind of took a break from work on the one-act to support a community theater group's week-long run of the musical production 'Through the Year with Frog and Toad', which was staged during the school day so elementary students came from all over the area to be inspired by the familiar early-reader characters. Consequently, the work on their competition one-act, 'The Asylum' didn't really get to the front burner until three weeks ago. Not really enough time to polish it up to the level of the advancing plays.

So the fact that they did as well as they did is commendable, I think. They'll eventually get back to the level where they were...or at least they will if they really get 'magnet-school' level support from the school board.

But school board support is a threatening rant so I'm not going there.

DS did a monologue as an Individual Event, though, and he did qualify to go to the State level with it, so we'll be heading to Troy State University at the end of the month for that competition.

I toted along my Ongoing Portable Project, though, and did some work on it. I started it, um, 6 years ago and worked on it mostly at Trumbauer festivals; I've got 17 little motifs yet to bead and then it will be *gasp* done. I think I may very well finish it at this year's State competition...there's a lot of waiting time there.