On Oct. 5, Woodbridge High hosted the Role About Theatre Festival led by drama teacher Cassandra Gaona which invited many different schools, students and teachers from around Southern California to perform various skits in front of judges.
Role About is a chance for students to grow as theatre artists. It is a one-day event where students can get feedback from various professional judges to enhance their performances.
“The intentions are to give students feedback from professionals on they’re performing and it’s intended to give them preparation for a college audition, ” said Gaona.
Students can grow as performers by getting feedback from these judges and the theatre festival helps to create an opportunity for them to learn more about the art of performing. They can also get into more auditions and maybe one day become movie stars on the big screens.
The event has many different categories, ranging from drama to comedy. The various categories create a welcoming environment for all of the performers that come to the role about festival. Awards are given to the top performances from all of the categories and there is an entire ceremony for all of the performers that worked so hard to make their performances shine and stand out to the judges.
A lot of planning goes into the theatre festival like thinking ahead and getting all of the buildings ready for the big event.
“You need to be able to [know which] people are in what buildings [and], have spaces open for these performances. It’s just a lot of thinking ahead of time that could even bring this event together,” technical theater student Vivian Nguyen said.
Nguyen worked with other theatre students to set up the school’s campus to invite the other schools for role about. Some students set up the tables and rearranged the classrooms while others put together papers with envelopes and directions for the other performers.
Gaona and other school directors meet together to discuss about the role about festival to plan out what will happen, who is performing, judges, food, and many other things. All of the students have prepared amazing performances that they are ready to perform on stage and Woodbridge High is prepared for them.
Students come from all around along with many different schools including Portola High, El Toro High, Irvine High, and University High.
“Students from tech theater, students from drama, other schools, Miss G, Miss Smith . . . everyone from other campuses and . . . there was a lot of other schools there,” technical theatre student Chelsea Abidin exclaimed.
At the theatre festival, there are food trucks, cotton candy machines, popcorn machines, magic classes and so much more. The festival gets the best judges from all around, some of them come from Hollywood, Disney and University of California colleges.
Role about is an opportunity for all theatre or drama students to show off their talents and it is also a good chance to meet a lot of other people from a lot of other schools. Everyone on this day is both excited and nervous to see the other people’s performances as well as perform themselves in front of judges.
