Twenty-one theater students, six adult chaperones – and costumes and set props needed for a one-act play – returned Sunday night from a 36-hour round-trip bus ride to Lincoln, Nebraska.

 

Well, technically, it was longer than 36 hours as there was bus trouble on the first leg of the trip. But it was all well worth the effort, said Jared St. Martin Brown, director of the Bridgeport High School Thespian Troupe.

 

The trip was the group’s second annual experience to participate in the International Thespian Festival. In April, the troupe’s one-act play, “Lovers of Verona,” was selected a Thespian Chapter Select Show at the West Virginia State Thespian Festival held at Davis & Elkins College. That accolade earned the troupe a $10,000 grant to fund a trip to the international event held at the University of Nebraska. 

 

“Each chapter is a state, so we were selected to represent West Virginia at the festival,” St. Martin Brown said.

Combined with dollars raised through troupe fundraising and financial support through BHS and Principal Mark DeFazio, the $10,000 West Virginia Department of Arts and Education grant funded the trip.

 

As part of the Chapter Select Showcase, “Lovers of Verona” was not judged or part of a competitive process, but performing it in such an environment was very beneficial to the students, St. Martin Brown said.

 

“We had a great audience. Festival audiences are very supportive. Those who are kind of rooted in theater history really get it,” he said.

 

Twenty cast and crew members are involved in the one-act play, which St. Martin Brown describes as a Commedia Dell’arte play.

 

“It’s a style that goes back to Italian renaissance,” he said. “It’s a modern play rooted in this style and festival audiences connect to things like that because they have studied it themselves.”

 

“Lovers of Verona” features masked stock characters – characters anyone would recognize, St. Martin Brown said.

 

“There’s an old man, a group of lovers, an overeducated doctor, a sea captain who thinks he’s very important and a greedy business owner,” he said. “These are universal characters who all run around and fall in love with each other. They make jokes along the way and end up in embarrassing situations.”

 

Costuming the production was St. Martin Brown's wife, Albani St. Martin Brown. Serving as director was his sister, Trina Byard.

 

“She didn’t go to the festival, but she worked with the play all the way up until it left for Nebraska,” he said.

 

It was nice, St. Martin Brown said, to see shows from other states and to see students from other states watch the BHS show.

 

“A lot of students from the California chapter select came to see our show and that was neat – making friends with an entire group from the other side of the country,” he said.

 

The other performance provided by the BHS Thespians was a vocal duet by sisters Hannah and Erica Cottrill. That performance was rated.  The opportunity also came about as a result of the West Virginia Thespian Festival where the girls received straight superior ratings for their delivery of “West Side Story’s” “A Boy Like That.” At the International festival, the Cottrill sisters competed in the Individual Event category.

 

“They had a scoring system of superior, excellent, good and fair in six individual categories and a composite score,” Erica Cottrill said. “We got all excellent ratings from the judges. I’m pretty proud of that.”

 

Their performance was among 45 duets performed and considering the fact that many of participating high schools were performing arts schools, she feels good about the outcome. St. Martin Brown agreed that the experience of being adjudicated on an international level was very positive and to receive excellent ratings was even more amazing.

 

In addition to the opportunity to watch some quality plays and musical performances, the BHS Thespians participated in workshops which provided specialized learning opportunities.

 

“With regard to performances, they had their choice of seeing anywhere from three to five one-act plays per Day or two full-length main stage plays,” St. Martin Brown said. “And there were so many classes. They could take up to five 90-minute sessions in one day if you wanted.”

 

Erica Cottrill said she really liked the workshop on how to create on-stage villains and make the believable, as well as auditioning for a musical with a pop/rock song, making the piece appropriate for the circumstance.

 

“The workshops were so beneficial. It was almost like taking a semester of theater class in one week,” St. Martin Brown said.

 

There were also meetings and activities which included night-time dances, stand-up comedy acts, improv and karaoke, among others.

 

“It was non-stop – jam-packed with every kind of activity a theater kid would like or enjoy and it was all extremely educational,” St. Martin Brown said.

 

The Bridgeport Thespians making the trip included a few 2015-2016 school year seniors, a few juniors, couple sophomores and several freshmen.

 

“The ‘new generation’ of Thespians was there so that was nice,” St. Martin Brown said. “There were a lot of seniors who had gone last year so this was a great reward for those seniors and an educational opportunity for the freshmen.”

 

Also making the trip to the International Thespian Festival were students from Notre Dame High School, who work with Bridgeport’s Jason and Sarah Young. Sarah Young accompanied the students on the trip.

 

St. Martin Brown and parent chaperone Anita Cottrill both said the students were very well behaved and enthusiastic about learning opportunities. Logistically, it was tiring, but well worth the effort, St. Martin Brown said.

 

“There were so many kids so getting them all where they needed to be was a little trying,” he said. “It was a pretty big campus, so there was a lot of walking.”

 

Erica Cottrill said it was an exciting experience.

 

“At first, it was pretty overwhelming, but it was surprising how easy it was to get into the routine,” she said. 

 

BHS students making the trip and attending the 2016 International Thespian Festival were Tori Bonafield, Callia Byard, Erica Cottrill, Hannah Cottrill, Niki Dewitt, Emily Estanich, Caroline Fulks, Noah Hall, Izzy Hawkinberry, Kady Hayes, Derek Hess, Cordell Hutcheson, Michaela Hutcheson, Jenna Keefover, Jordan Kennedy-Rea, Vincent Pinti, Sierra Shreves, Ethan Willis, Morgan Willis and Hayley Wilson.

 

Editor's Note: Pictures were provided by Anita Cottrill.