The Holy Redeemer Drama Department has had a long history of performing extremely well at the Zone Drama Festivals, and this year was no different as HRH took home a whopping nine awards and four honourable mentions for their three plays.
“For many of our students, this was their very first Festival experience,” says Drama Teacher Peter Taylor. “They had never experienced the thrill of performing in front of other schools, or watching other school’s plays, or meeting many other drama students from across the zone that love theatre as much as they do. Needless to say, the students had a blast!”
The two senior high plays entitled Corrections and It’s Not You, It’s Time, attended the Senior High Festival on April 20th and 21st in Spruce Grove. 10 plays performed over the two-day festival. Both HRH shows received standing ovations from the other schools and high praise from the adjudicators.
The high praise from the adjudicators translated into some pretty big awards. Corrections won three Outstanding Achievement awards for Directing (Cassie Pilon) and two Acting (Delaney Kuilboer and Cody Van Beek), one Honourable Mention for Makeup and Hairstyling (Pearl Clark) and Best Production of the year! This marks the ninth time in 17 festival experiences that HRH has won the top award.
“It feels incredible,” says grade 12 student Pilon. “All of our hard work paid off and I couldn’t be more proud of the cast and crew.”
Corrections would then go onto the Alberta High School Drama Festival (provincials) in Red Deer from May 4th to 6th. There, the cast and crew would have their best performance and once again bring the audience to their feet for a standing ovation.
It’s Not You, It’s Time also took home some major awards winning Best Backstage Teamwork (April Aclan, Abby Bolones and Kaye Saldua), Outstanding Achievement in Acting (Cassie Squire and Dylan Watson) and Honourable Mention for Directing (Shaylynn Dozorec and Vada Erickson).
The junior high play, One Hundred Lies, also had an amazing festival, which was held at the Red Brick in Edson on April 27th and 28th. Here, grade 9 student Christina Belcourt led the charge winning Outstanding Achievement in Acting, while the entire cast took home the award for Outstanding Achievement by an Ensemble Cast. The crew won Best Backstage Teamwork (Toryn Reilly, Annaliese Borysko, Shannon Bouchard, Sophie Coulstring and Cailynn Frison). The show also won Honourable Mentions for Acting to Kiersten Tait and for Dramatic Moment.
The accolades the three shows took home definitely shows the strong talent within the Drama Program. “Having a play win Best Production just shows that our little school in Edson can produce high quality theatre,” says Taylor. “This is all thanks to the outstanding work of our students.”
Beyond performing at Festival, the students absolutely love interacting with other like-minded drama students. Watching the other shows and then talking to the other performers is always one of the highlights. Not to mention, the students love participating with the other schools in the wrap-up dance.
Now, with the school year winding down, HRH turns their attention to their main stage production of Miracle on 34th Street plus The Grinch. Tickets go on sale in the fall and it will run from November 29th to December 2nd.