At the Texas State Thespian Festival, students can attend workshops that are conducted by national and international teaching artists, and in a wide variety of theatre areas. In addition to the workshops, colleges, and watching performances from various schools around the state, all 43 of our students participated in a competition event. There are two types of competitions offered:
1.    Texas Only events: These are competition events that are only hosted at the Texas State Thespian Festival. These competitions test the technical skills and ability to work as a team under pressure and with a time constraint. Students have 2 hours to complete a set design, hair/make up design, or a costume design. The catch is, they did not know what show they were going to be designing for until they arrived at the competition. The judge tells the teams what their prompt is, and then they have two hours to complete it. This year the prompt was The Little Prince. ALL our design teams were first time competitors. 
Team Set Design – Emma Kolah, Busso Jagne, Justin Lee and Danielle Stasio achieved third place in the competition with their set design! 

2.    National Qualifying Events: Actors and technicians compete in Individual Events (IE’s) that are judged by a 3-person panel. The requirements and rubric for these IE’s are the same across every Thespian Festival in the nation. If students score a Superior from the average of the three judges, they are then qualified to compete at the International Thespian Festival in Indiana this summer. These IE’s are some of the toughest acting and technical contests that our students face, just behind UIL One Act Play. Achieving an average of a Superior ranking in your respective IE is not an easy feat. Last year, we had 1 of our actors qualify to compete at the International Festival. This year, we had 15 students qualify. For nearly all these students it was their first-time attending festival and competing in an event with such high caliber of competition and rigor.
a.    Davis Adams and Sierra Little – Duet Acting
b.    Camila Chandler and Aiden Gross – Duet Acting
c.    Oli Elam and J Stanfield – Duet Acting
d.    Rachel Carrillo and Tanvi Dubey – Duet Acting
e.    Olivia Gutierrez – Solo Musical
f.    Ava Tumey – Solo Musical
g.    Camila Patino Gonzalez – Second Year Qualifier – Monologue
h.    Helen Truitt – Monologue
i.    Daphne Kaufman – Monologue
j.    Danie Andrade – Monologue
k.    Reece Langland – Stage Management 
3.    All State Closing Ceremonies - Performers and Technicians:  And finally, we had 4 members of our company participating in the closing ceremonies of festival. The process started a month before we left for festival where interested students had to film their audition and submit to the state board of directors. Students from around the state were eligible to audition for a performing role, or as a technician. Bellaire’s talent is WELL represented and will be on display for the entire convention participants. 
a.    Reece Langland – he applied for stage management and achieved the award. Reece has been stage managing every rehearsal, noting blocking, writing cues, calling the show, and making sure the show starts and ends as it is supposed to. This is a huge honor AND responsibility. From all the applicants around the state, there’s only one student stage manager for the San Antonio festival, and it’s our Reece Langland.
b.    Jermaine Hayden – Homecoming King, President of Red Bird Productions, and now featured dancer at the 2023 Texas State Thespian Festival closing ceremonies.  
c.    Busso Jagne and Emma Kolah – BJ and Emma are some of the most talented technicians that RBP and Bellaire High have. They were called into action when we arrived at festival on Friday night because two scheduled technicians were unable to attend. Per the RBP and Bellaire way, these two sprung into action and are running that backstage like a tight and organized ship. 

Last year we brought less than 20 students to Festival, and this year we brought 43. They all represented Bellaire so wonderfully in every way.