Dear Theatre Director:

I hope this message finds you well on this brisk October morning and in an extraordinary fall semester. I wanted to share a few updates with you relative to this fall's virtual Theatre season in WHSFA. Registration is opens next Wednesday, October 7 through October 14 (with upload of district entries -- video files -- happening Oct. 21-27). 

Special Announcements

Whether or not you are unable to organize/arrange a full one-act entry, any number of your students can participate in Thespian Excellence Awards performance or technical categories (formerly "Individual Events") as an alternative or in addition to one-act performance. We will follow the same district - sectional - State sequence this year, but also allow "at-large" entry to the State Festival. This is to foster more opportunities for student involvement and learning throughout the fall season, and could entail less direction/supervision than a full one-act production. Visit the Theatre Contests page for more details (see link in next section). 

Theatre Contests Page

Visit the Theatre Contests page on the WHSFA website for expanded guidance on:

• Thespys Contest: scroll to this section for descriptions of categories, rules, and regulations

• Rights/Royalties Licensing: We have added more detailed guidance on what to tell licensing companies when applying for rights/royalties. 

• FAQs (in light orange) - navigating this strange new world of virtual theatre, including how to do videoconferenced, virtual productions (with a letter to school administrators from WHSFA Executive Director Adam Jacobi advocating for Zoom, which has the most expansive features for virtual production -- some school districts have already made special exceptions to their normal videoconference platform to allow Zoom for Theatre). 

Important Dates 2020

The same dates also apply to the WHSFA's 2020 implementation of online Thespy (individual events) contests.

Adjudication Course Opens: Oct. 7
Online Registration of Entries:  Oct. 7-14
District Video Entries Upload:  Oct. 21-27
Sectional Entries Upload:  Nov. 11-17
State Entries Upload: Nov. 27-Dec. 3
State Scheduled Streams: Thurs. & Fri. evenings, Dec. 10-11; Sat., Dec. 12

2020 State Festival Schedule

Click here to see the tentative schedule as we've adapted it for this extraordinary year -- optimized to conflict least with the curricular day, since many schools have elected to suspend all field trips and release time for teachers. 

Many of us are filled with more questions than answers, and for "type-A" personalities who like to organize, this can be painful. Yet, in the Theatre, we are accustomed to adaptation and pivoting, and figuring out how to stretch new technologies to achieve our artistic goals. Many of our regulations for this fall season are fairly open-ended, because we lack a frame of reference for this medium. We are also one of the first interscholastic theatre seasons in the country, so several other state associations are looking to us for guidance and a model of how to do this! So, we appreciate your grace and understanding, and of course, patience! 

Most warmly,

Adam Jacobi, Executive Director