Thespians excel at districts at Nova Southeastern

The drama club’s thespians went to districts on Dec. 9 at Nova Southeastern University.  The majority of the pieces performed earned either a superior rating (the highest possible) or excellent (the next highest).

“This was my first year going to districts, but it was so much fun. The performances were all amazing, and it was great to have this time to learn about and get to know everyone,” freshman Emily Wilson said.

Wilson performed a duet musical and small group musical, earning excellent ratings in both. She said that she practiced hard almost every day after school in the drama room and it ended up paying off. From having to perform in front of just the troupe at rehearsal to an auditorium full of people can be terrifying. Wilson said it just felt like a fun and better way of performing because the judges were very pleasant and so was the audience. She got helpful critiques for next time and compliments from other competitors.

Sophomore Alexis Dixon was in a large group musical performance that got straight superiors, meaning that the judges’ decision was unanimous.

“I was thrown in the air three times for my performance, and it was one of the things I was worried about the most,” Dixon said.

Dixon feared falling in front of the judges because right before their performance, she fell during rehearsal. The pressure was on for this performance especially since this was many students’ only performance of the day and no one wanted to mess up.

The large group musical was the most difficult to prepare since there were 16 performers and each needed to learn the choreography and lyrics to the song. At the end of the day, when the results were announced, junior Sofia Gonzalez, director of the piece, was one of the happiest.

“There would be days that we would go to a park after school until 8 or 9 p.m., practicing until we got it perfect. It was so hard at first because some of us couldn’t pick up the moves until a week before districts, but we pushed through and made it,” Gonzalez said.

Senior Robin Saldana performed in a pantomime performance which also got a superior. Saldana said It was a very difficult category since everything needs to be in sync with the music, but the judges scored them high, saying they loved it especially because of the plot twist at the end and because it was “blocked amazingly.”

“This is the last year that I will be able to compete and I am happy that I got to end it this way,” Saldana said.