{"id":3704,"date":"2024-01-23T11:23:55","date_gmt":"2024-01-23T16:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/?p=3704"},"modified":"2024-01-23T11:23:56","modified_gmt":"2024-01-23T16:23:56","slug":"the-hcc-theater-festival-a-day-to-remember","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/the-hcc-theater-festival-a-day-to-remember\/","title":{"rendered":"The HCC Theater Festival: A Day to Remember"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Babiha Kaur, Digital Editor<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Open to all high school students taking theater classes in Howard County, the voluntary field trip to the HCC Theater Festival featured a variety of workshops and activities that students could attend in order to learn about multiple aspects of theater arts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the field trip was optional, many students from River Hill\u2019s theater department chose to attend. Freshman Alexis Pages decided to go on the field trip because she \u201cthought it would be a nice opportunity to try some new things.\u201d Freshman Penny Tofigh describes her motivation to attend the trip as well, stating, \u201cI thought it would be a really good experience for me, as someone who is interested in theater, to learn more and be around that kind of area and those people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The start of the festival featured a performance from All County Improv, Howard County\u2019s improvisation troupe consisting of high school students. The group played a variety of improv games to entertain the audience. Junior Abby Heineman reflects on the show, stating, \u201cI really liked the beginning, the ACI performance. [It] was really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students greatly enjoyed their chosen workshops. Each student was able to attend three classes, each featuring a different aspect of theater. The workshops included Improvisation, Jazz\/Ballet, Musical Theatre Song, Musical Theatre Dance, Unarmed Stage Combat, Knife Stage Combat, Devising, Shakespeare Acting, Stage Makeup, Sword Fighting, Dialects, Puppetry, and others. Alexis attended the Dialects workshop, describing, \u201cWe went over how people with a New York accent hold their faces, the different mouth movements that help them achieve the different sounds, how they pronounce different consonants and vowels, and the different parts that give it the general sounds.\u201d Alexis enjoyed this workshop not only because it was entertaining, but also because of how informative it was. She expands, \u201cOne of the things we talked about is it\u2019s really hard to do a French accent in English because in the French language, a lot of the sounds that we use don\u2019t really exist in normal conversations. It was cool.\u201d This workshop was junior Abby Heineman\u2019s personal favorite because she has \u201calways liked Newsies<\/em>, so it was fun being able to learn some new techniques and everything.\u201d Newsies<\/em> is a musical about a ragged band and is set in New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another popular workshop that students attended was Stage Makeup. In this class, students observed the instructor demonstrating how to achieve flesh-like wounds and elderly looks on an actor\u2019s face. For Penny, this was the most interesting workshop because \u201cthe instructor was kind of funny, and he knew a lot, and I feel like it\u2019s something I haven\u2019t really learned a lot about,\u201d she explained. Additionally, Alexis shares, \u201cIt was really cool to watch [the instructor] do it. He showed us how he uses cotton, latex, and all these different things to help achieve the look.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the most entertaining type of workshop for students were those that taught stage combat. Alexis enjoyed the Knife Combat workshop the most, describing, \u201cGetting to do something a little more intense and with props was very interesting.\u201d This workshop taught students how actors use props to mimic fighting, along with the techniques and skills needed to do it safely. Alexis expands, \u201cIt\u2019s kind of cool, because even if the actor in the fight scene were to forget which way to dodge, the actor that is attacking would have little cues to show them which direction to go. It was really cool to see all the things that go into it and interact with other people. We played a lot of fun games with knives. It was so fun; I had a blast.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Theater arts is special to many students for a variety of reasons. Abby comments, \u201cI always like being on stage and singing especially, so the musical theater part is a lot of fun for me. Getting constructive criticism back for how I can improve is really important to me because I want to be able to learn how to be a better actress.\u201d Although theater can be fun, it can also be stimulating to the brain and body. Alexis shares, \u201cI think theater can be both physically and intellectually challenging, because while you have to learn all the dances [and] blocking, you have to understand what\u2019s happening in a story and how to get that message across. It\u2019s just so many things put into one. It\u2019s singing, it\u2019s dancing, it\u2019s acting, it\u2019s fighting, it\u2019s just really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The HCC Theater Festival was an enjoyable, educational experience for those that attended. Alexis concludes, \u201cI thought it was really fun, really well organized, it was easy to find my way around, all the workshops were fun, [and] it was overall a good experience.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Babiha Kaur, Digital Editor Open to all high school students taking theater classes in Howard County, the voluntary field trip to the HCC Theater Festival featured a variety of workshops and activities that students could attend in order to learn about multiple aspects of theater arts. Although the field trip was optional, many students…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":3706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[280,535,855,286,269,211,285,854],"class_list":["post-3704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","tag-feature","tag-field-trip","tag-hcc","tag-journalism","tag-rhhs","tag-river-hill","tag-river-hill-high-school","tag-theater-festival"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/unnamed-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3707,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3704\/revisions\/3707"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}