Arcadia Stage once again celebrated 1st place at the Drama Teachers Association of Southern California (DTASC)’s Shakespeare Festival. After strenuous weeks of tedious rehearsals, Advanced Theatre and Advanced Stagecraft were finally ready to compete on Apr. 24 at El Camino Real Charter High School (ECR), ending up with a variety of trophies by the end of the day.

• 1st Place in Sweepstakes, Costume Court, Light Design, Sound Design, No Small Parts (Twelfth Night), Shakespeare’s Passport (Titus Andronicus), and Act 5, Scene 1 (Othello)
• 2nd Place in Costume Character and Large Group Drama (Romeo and Juliet)
• 3rd Place in Set Design, Marketing and Publicity, and Large Group Comedy (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
• Honorable Mention in Audition Monologue (Anagha Arunkumar), and Ship It (Hamlet)

Arcadia Stage performs at DTASC twice a year, competing against 40 to 90 schools depending on the semester, where competitors have five to eight minutes to tell the story of a play or scene that fits into categories for the competition. Actors are only allowed to wear clothes fit for a school or casual setting, and their set must only consist of a maximum of four chairs that may be arranged creatively to suggest a specific setting.

Theatre Director Evan Tamayo helped the students prepare their pieces and elaborated on how DTASC functions and how different it is from traditional theatre pieces.

“Without traditional Costumes, Props, Sets, Lights, and Sound, the actors must think outside the norm of play/musical productions into a more abstract form of storytelling and pushing themselves to tell the best and most concise performed story they can while creatively using their bodies and chairs to make sounds, music, and visual representation of locations, objects, and physical levels. All of this while keeping to the spirit of the playwright and giving the best acting performance possible,” said Mr. Tamayo

Theatre Director Steven Volpe described how DTASC has helped the cast thrive and how he’s seen actors grow throughout the whole process, from early rehearsals to their showcase and competition. 

“We have won 10 years straight in a row for not only the Fall DTASC, but also our Shakespeare DTASCs as well,” said Mr. Volpe. “DTASC is a really fun experience because it challenges everybody to think out of the box, so you’re not staging a traditional play…It starts off from just an idea and a concept to a fully realized scene…There’s also no hiding, meaning every cast member is a lead and is required to be present vocally, physically, and emotionally in the process.”

Junior Sofia Avendano has been performing in Advanced Theatre for two years, and she was chosen to perform “Constance’s Monologue” from King John and “Helena’s Monologue” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream for this semester’s festival. 

“Being chosen for the monologue category was, firstly, a huge shock. I was so scared because this time my performance and scene all depended on me. But by rehearsing every single day with the other performer in the monologue category, we pushed each other and our acting abilities, becoming good friends along the way,” said Avendano.

“DTASC scenes are constantly growing and changing up until the minute you step into the competition room. You end up learning so much from all of the trial and error, seeing what fits and what doesn’t. Sometimes, it’s a lot of hard work when you’re working on an idea that gets replaced with something else, but everything always has a funny way of working out, and I think that’s the best part about this journey,” she said.