The Falcon Players were one of three schools chosen to perform their fall show at the International Thespian Society (ITS) conference at Stifel Theater in downtown Saint Louis. The group kicked off their performances in November with a production of “The Children’s Hour” by Lillian Hellman, and headed downtown to perform for thousands on Jan. 10.
The process to be selected began at the beginning of the school year when director Lyndal Willis requested for Summit’s fall play to be evaluated by representatives from ITS. When the representatives watched “The Children’s Hour,” they were tasked with “grading” the show, Willis said.
“At the beginning of the year, when we had our show selected and started the rehearsal process, we had to put in a request to be adjudicated, or judged, and we had to pay a small fine to help pay the judges to come to our school. Then judges filled out a rubric that explained what we did well [and] what we didn’t do well. And based on that judgement, that’s how we were chosen, and then we got to present our show at the conference,” Willis said.
Being chosen out of dozens of schools came as a surprise to many of the actors and others behind the scenes. But, as sophomore costumes lead-in-training Charlie Byrnes said, it was a representation of their efforts.
“It was really exciting [to find out that we had been chosen], and it felt like everything we had done and stressed over had paid off,” Byrnes said.
Senior Mary Donovan, who starred as Mary Tilford, said that preparations for the final performance began about a month before they took the stage at Stifel.
“We picked the show back up in December. We spent lots of time running through our lines, that was the biggest thing, relearning our lines. One thing we did was build the set back up, and we practiced on the set a few times,” Donovan said.
The conference hosted about 2,500 people, all of whom had the opportunity to watch “The Children’s Hour.” While it was a great honor to be chosen, the number of people in the audience caused nerves amongst the cast, Donovan said.
“[It was] terrifying [to have so many people in attendance], but also so exciting. Looking out into the audience, it’s [daunting]. But, over time, we got better. It was definitely very exciting too, because you get to perform in front of so many people and have so many people watch it,” Donovan said.
The ITS Conference is filled with thousands of people who understand and love theater. Willis explained that for her, as director, being able to see her students perform for thousands of people brought up a lot of emotions.
“It was both really exciting and really nerve-racking [to see my students on stage]. I tell my students that as a director, watching a show is a very exciting experience to see the thing you have worked really hard on come together. But, it’s also like, think of like a presentation that you do in class, except for that presentation is for 2,500 people who are also big theater people. So, to present that in front of other theater people, teachers, students, it was very nerve-racking, but also so exciting that my students got to perform in front of thousands of people,” Willis said.
