Red Bird Productions qualified in two new individual events, participated in a “lip sync battle” performance, won two $2,000 scholarships and earned two Mainstage callbacks at the Texas Thespians Festival in Corpus Christi, Nov 15-18.

Lip Sync
In mid-October, the RBP directors sat Helen Truitt and Camila Chandler to pose a new challenge.

Truitt and Chandler were tasked with choreographing and directing a Texas-only event called “Lip Sync Battle,” where schools from all over the state choreograph a 5-minute routine to a compilation of songs that follow the same theme. This year’s was “Quack to the Future,” a reference to the “Back to the Future” franchise, meaning lip-syncs could only feature songs present in the “Back to the Future” film franchise.

“I was really excited when Mrs. Boffone wanted us to do this,” Truitt said. “I am really glad that she trusted me and Camila with full creative freedom.”

Truitt had a vision for the routine from the beginning of the process and with Boffone giving her full creative freedom, she felt like her vision could come to life. Though actually putting the routine together came with some obstacles.

“A lot of people didn’t show up for the first audition,” Truitt said. “We had to work around that and say if you just wanna show up, we’ll let you in. You don’t need to audition and that’s when 15 people came, so it all worked out fine, but I was a little scared at first.”

Getting a team together, making the routine competition ready and motivating the group to work together taught Truitt a lot about the directing process.

“I feel like there was some loss of respect because we weren’t an authoritative teacher figure in their eyes,” Truitt said. “We are just their classmates, so setting up that relationship that we need them to come to rehearsals and listen was a learning process.”

After months of planning, directing and rehearsals, the Lip Sync Battle routine was chosen alongside 14 other schools out of a total of 41 competitors to perform at the Lip Sync Showcase for the whole festival. For Truitt, seeing it all come together and “knowing the judges liked what RBP had to offer” was the most memorable part of the process, despite the hurdles Chandler and her encountered.


Mainstage Callbacks
RBP company members Daniel Percy and Aiden Gross received a perfect 20/20 score in the “Duet Acting” individual event.

Individuals who get a perfect score in their IE receive a “Mainstage Callback,” where they perform their piece again for a new set of judges. This gives them the chance to perform in front of the entire festival at the closing ceremonies.

“My initial reaction to finding out that I made mainstage callbacks was complete disbelief,” Percy said. “All I had heard about mainstage callbacks was that they were basically impossible to make.”

Percy and Gross, who performed a scene from “Describe the Night” by Rajiv Joseph, prepared for their scene by using “uncommon” acting techniques and stepping out of their comfort zones.

“We would constantly rehearse, rehearse, rehearse and then talk about our characters, talk about our inner feelings and our feelings toward each other as characters,” Percy said. “A step we actually took while preparing, that isn’t something that people normally do, is we did a couple of run-throughs as each other’s characters.”

Percy’s biggest takeaway from the rehearsal process was trusting whatever his instincts and choices were, which was an “incredibly valuable resource” for him as an actor.

The finalists who would perform in the closing ceremony were announced on the night of the callbacks. Although their duet scene wasn’t chosen, Percy found satisfaction in his hard work in another way.

“What made me the happiest was when people would tell me they enjoyed my scene, but even more so I would see their faces, and I would see the impact I had on them,” Percy said.

Scholarships
Seniors Soleiman Barrera-Kelly and Daniel Andrade both received $2,000 scholarships from Texas Thespians.

Alongside applying for the scholarship, Andrade competed in “Duet Acting” with senior Rachel Carillo. Andrade, who plans to major in theatre education, spent three days “perfecting” his initial submission for the scholarship, which consisted of an essay, resume and a three minute pre-recorded interview.

“Because I had so many conflicts throughout the day with my other IEs, they moved me and Soleiman up to go first [during the in-person segment],” Andrade said. “When I walked in, Mr. Davenport, the guy running the whole thing, was more nervous than I was. I was calm as can be. I had prepared during the week prepping questions and just genuinely opening up to my classmates about the struggles that I’d gone through in order to get to where I am now because I don’t like talking about my personal feelings.”

Texas Thespians awards scholarships of $1,000 and $2,000, and Andrade and Barrera-Kelly were among the few to receive the $2,000 scholarship.

“I thought they were gonna just send out an email and be like, ‘Hey, you won,’” Andrade said. “But whenever the director of Thespians came out [during closing ceremonies] to read out the scholarship winners, and he read out the first wave of names who won $1,000, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s okay, I’ll get it next time.’ But when he read the $2,000 winners, I was the first name to be called. It was like a moment of relief, but I was in such shock that I couldn’t fully process all the emotions at once.”

New Events
Although RBP only had 13 qualifying students this year as opposed to last year’s 15, the company qualified in three new types of individual events from four different students: sophomore Kalyani Gifford and senior Marina Martinez in Playwriting, senior Emma Kolah in Scenic Design and senior Ella Nicholson in Short Film.

For Martinez, competing in an event that had not been done before in the company came with challenges that had also never been faced before.

“Writing a 30-minute play in less than two months was a big challenge in itself,” Martinez said. “Though it’s mainly my fault for choosing to go to Thespians later than most and choosing to do an IE with a tighter deadline. My biggest challenge in writing though was probably figuring out the story’s timeline.”

Martinez’s play “Peculiar” follows two girls in their senior year of high school, each from different backgrounds, dealing with their own problems, who “miraculously meet each other” and “change their lives in the process.”

Unlike most other individual events, the results for playwriting came out before the festival had begun, taking away Martinez’s “nerves” about the competition.

“I didn’t know that the results of playwriting would be posted before the festival, and I definitely was not expecting to be a finalist,” Martinez said. “Instead of anxiously waiting for results while at Thespians, I could enjoy it already knowing the results. I think with contests, I stress out and overthink while I’m supposed to have fun, so not having that big cloud loom over me was pretty nice.”

Kolah, the president of RBP, created her set design not only for the scenic design individual event but also in preparation for RBP’s upcoming production of “MARIAN (or the True Tale of Robin Hood).”

“Most of the set design will translate into the set,” Kolah said. “For any show, the initial set design is always amped up to a higher level than what is actually possible or achievable in the limited time and budget we have to build the set. We’re currently in the process of building, so I’m excited to see the final product.”

In her design, Kolah hoped to embody themes of “MARIAN.”

“The thematic points of my design were centered around two major design aspects,” Kolah said. “The first being the aspect of childhood, manifested through the retelling of the classic tale of Robin Hood. The second being the merging of the two worlds of Nottingham and Sherwood. The character of Marian blends the two worlds together so I wanted to translate that into my set.”

CLOSER
The show Kolah designed for “MARIAN (or the True Tale of Robin Hood),” will perform on Dec. 12 at 5:30 p.m. and Dec. 13 and 14 at 6:30 p.m. For ticket information, visit bhsauditorium.ludus.com.