By Naomi Tsuang
Staff Writer
The Mira Costa Drama Department and the Costa tech team competed in the annual Fullerton Theatre Festival at the University of California Fullerton on Mar. 18 and 19 where they won best overall musical for “The Addams Family,” with tech and Comedy Sportz also winning multiple awards.
At the festival, Drama performed scenes from their fall plays, “Check Please” and “Picnic,” a five minute portion from their upcoming spring musical, “The Addams Family” and several student directed scenes and monologues. Drama’s scenes were judged on choreography, costumes, vocals, acting and overall professionalism.
“Fullerton really bonds us all together as a department,” senior Miranda Baldo said. “No matter what happens, if we win or lose, we end up having a great time. In the end, it comes down to who loves [performing] the most and Mira Costa drama definitely loves it more than anything.”
The tech team competed in the Tech Olympics at Fullerton which included tool identification, costume quick change, electrical wiring, team knot tying, light hang, prop set up and tool usage. They split into two teams, Team Green and Team Gold and won nine medals with Team Gold coming in first and Team Green coming in second.
“I spend most of my time [at Costa] with drama and I think that’s pretty true for everyone who is in the drama department,” Drama tech representative Sofia Beroud said. “[Fullerton allowed] us to see what other schools were doing which inspired us to do better. [Fullerton is] really the only trip that the entire Department gets to go on together.”
Comedy Sportz members competed in two different teams, “Team Haha,” and “Team Ancenstry.com.” The teams performed improv in front of judges that ranked each performance by how each team maintained and acted out scenes. “Team Ancestry.com” placed first in improv theatre games.
“I’ve been on Comedy Sportz since my freshman year, and I’ve always heard stories of how we used to dominate the category at Fullerton, but in recent years we haven’t been as successful,” Comedy Sportz member senior Hadley Thomas said. “I’ve wanted to be a part of that winning team since I first joined, and getting to finally see that happen is really great. I’m so proud of my team, we all worked really hard. It ended up being really fun and rewarding.”
According to Drama president senior Dana Beech, other schools that attended Fullerton knew that Costa had done extremely well in the past few years which motivated Costa to do their best to place.
“Obviously, we [went] in very ready [and] everyone wanted to win,” Beech said. “I think that throughout the year we do so many things to build up for Fullerton [since] it is our main [event of the school year]. Especially as a senior, watching your department grow a lot during the year and having it pay off at Fullerton [is] awesome.”
The Mira Costa Drama Department held Dessert Theatre on March 17 in the auditorium to give a preview of all of the performances that they took to the Fullerton Theatre Festival.
“Since we competed in front of other schools and judges at Fullerton, Dessert Theatre really [allowed] us to perform in front of an audience and get those reactions so that the next couple of days at Fullerton, we really [got] a feel for how the audience [was] going to react,” Beech said.
“I think that everyone walked away from [Fullerton] very happy with our wins and overall it was a great time,” Drama president senior Dana Beech said. “Next year I hope that we keep working hard as we have been the last couple of years. The results that we had this year were all that we could have asked for.”
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