Volume 31, Issue 8 December 16, 1994
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Festival and Tiddler' begin by Alison AdUrf The 20th Annual Illinois High School Theater Festival will be held Jan. 5 through Jan. 7. The theme for the festival is "The Second Decade: A Legacy" as the event celebrates its 20th birthday. More than 3000 students, including several from Maine South, will attend the affair at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, which is sponsored by the Illinois Theatre Association, the Illinois State Board of Education, Illinois Stale University and the University of Illinois at ChampaignUrbana. The festival packs participating students' schedules full of workshops, full-length and showcase performances put on by various high schools, exhibits from the theater departments of high schools and universities, the «jj>ular opening night festivities at which pioolhouse Rock" will be featured. High school seniors are also eligible to audition for theatre programs at many Illinois colleges and universities in both performance and design categories. The 25 students from South will have to choose from literally hundreds of ways to spend their time at the festival. "It's really neat that we get to see the different styles of productions and different interpretations of characters put on by other schools, to be able to participate in workshops on subjects we may not learn about at Maine South," participant Megan Tucker says. The adult sponsors who will accompany the students include Mr. and Mrs. Sanchez,
Mr. Pressler, Mrs. McCleneghan and Mr. Muszynski. At press time, Mr. Muszynski was scheduled to present a workshop entided "Sharing the Space: Am I Ever Really Acting Alone?" For most, however, the highlight of the entire festival is the All-State Play. The musical Fiddler on the Roof was chosen last year by the festival committee to be presented. This performance is the culmination of months of preparation spent building, rehearsing, and coordinating schedules for the over 127 members of the combined company, which includes not only the cast and crew but also an orchestra. This year, Maine South has one of the largest groups of students in the state as well as in South's history participating in the All-State production. Juniors Joe Pindelski and Meg Donehoo and senior Jerry Miceli auditioned and were chosen to be part of the cast Junior Joe Kasmierski and seniors Tina DeGrazia, Alison Adlaf and Bill Grezinski ^plied and were accepted to be members of crew. The six students spent a week during the summer rehearsing or building at various locations around the state. Since then, both cast and crew have had additional practices, with the group even having lowork during Homecoming Weekend. Still more rehearsals for both cast and crew are planned for late December before the festival begins. Students involved in the All-State Production do not get a chance to participate in the rest of the festival due to the fact that this year there are four performances instead of the usual one
in order to acccomodate the large audiences. This doesn't faze the students, however. "I was really honored to be chosen to audition, and making it [the cast] was paramount," Pindelski says. Many of the students and sponsors attended the festival last year, participating in yet another area through the presentation of Empress of China. The play was selected as one of five full-length productions and met with great acclaim from students and instructors alike. In short, the festival' s goal as stated in the festival guide is to help students "to realize through this experience that theatre is one means of fufilling each individual's innate need and desire to create." As for the much-anticipated Fiddler on the Roof, crew member Kazmierski says, "the play is going to be awesome...just wait and see."
The Second Decade: A L e g a c y
The traffic of a play may last two hours, but the experience gained spans the generations.