(Winston-Salem) High school theatre students from across North Carolina will converge on Winston-Salem this weekend, when the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) hosts the 2013 North Carolina Thespian Festival.

The festival is the annual conference of the N.C. Thespian Society, the state chapter of the International Thespian Society.

More than 300 people, including high school students, directors and chaperones from 29 schools, are expected to attend the festival, which will be held Friday and Saturday, March 15 and 16, on the UNCSA campus, 1533 South Main St., Winston-Salem.

Faculty members from the UNCSA Schools of Drama, Design and Production, and Filmmaking and special guest artists will present workshops for the festival participants. Workshops will include: Audition Tips, Stage Combat, Broadway Jazz, Hip Hop Dance, Blood and Guts (creating realistic wounds and prosthetics for stage and screen), Eggs From Mashed Potatoes (creating affordable edible fake foods for the stage), Practical Magic (how to turn a thrift shop find into a theatrical costume), Preparing a Role, Preparing a Song, Alexander and Meisner techniques, and Production Design for Film.

Participants will tour UNCSA’s Filmmaking facilities and will have a technical tour of The Gerald Freedman Theatre of Performance Place. They will see a sampling of recent UNCSA student films. 

Thespians also will present a play showcase and will participate in adjudicated individual events in both performance and design over the course of the conference. Winners of the adjudicated events will be announced during Tarheel Theatre Tapestry, the festival’s concluding event, at 5 p.m. Saturday in The Gerald Freedman Theatre. Thespians earning a superior rating may advance to the International Thespian Festival in Lincoln, Neb., June 24-29.

 

As America’s first state-supported arts school, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts is a unique stand-alone public university of arts conservatories. With a high school component, UNCSA is a degree-granting institution that trains young people of talent in music, dance, drama, filmmaking, and design and production. Established by the N.C. General Assembly in 1963, the School of the Arts opened in Winston-Salem (“The City of Arts and Innovation”) in 1965 and became part of the University of North Carolina system in 1972. For more information, visit www.uncsa.edu.

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