Good morning, team,
Thank you all SO much for such an amazing meeting on Saturday. I hope you all felt welcome, seen, and heard at the meeting and I'm re-energized and ready to get this Festival going with all of us pitching in to make it happen!
Reminders about things we know:
The IE Festival will be here here at Ft Walton Beach High School on November 6th
The One Act Festival will be held at NWFL College on December 14th
Here are the costs we agreed upon:
Registration (once per student/chaperone) $40
Shirts (once per student/chaperone) $10
Troupe Fee (one per troupe) $100
One Act Registration $150
Individual Event Registration: $5 per student per event
We spoke about how registration for the One Acts would work - here's the plan.
You will register your IEs and Troupe for that festival - I believe I set the window as September 20th until October 27th - after that festival I will reopen registration for you to register your One Act. If you have any new students who are going to the festival (they were part of the One Act but not the IE festival) then you will need to register them - if your cast is made up of people who were previously at the IE festival then all you have to do is pay your One Act Registration and a $5 per student fee. I have chosen to include that $5 per student fee for One Act participation - I know it's another cost and I'm sorry about that but I'm also trying to think long term and to get our balance healthy in the event that we end up splitting the district we'll need to split up that account so I want us all set up for success going forward. If anyone feels like the $5 per student fee for One Acts is a ridiculous cost that needs to be talked about I'm open to those discussions - some districts treat the festivals as two separate events and kids register and pay for both so I'm trying to keep costs down but also keep the money a'flowin'.
We spoke briefly about COVID and last minute replacements, here are my thoughts (as of now):
You will register your IEs and Troupe for the festival - I believe I set the window as September 20th until October 27th (I'll confirm those dates with Randall) - that gives us a LOT of time to make sure that everything we register is correct and ready to go but we do live in COVID times and so I am going to be incredibly flexible with last minute substitutions in the event of sudden quarantine or some other unexpected catastrophe. I am trusting nobody to try to take advantage of me or the system - if, on the day you arrive a kid has suddenly gotten quarantined or something has happened and you need to take Billy out of monologues and put Sally in (who has slots available and isn't going beyond her 3 event limit) then I will allow it. The name on the adjudication sheet and the titles might be wrong but, as long as it's an actual emergency and I know about it and approve it, we can move forward with that.
I have spoken with Randall about this and we both agree that times are tough and all we really care about is making sure as many students as possible get the chance to have at least this one performance/presentation opportunity.
We walked the space and we all agreed that we have nice big rooms and plenty of options - the only hiccup I can imagine is not having a piano in every musical theatre room so I might need to send all of those to the Chorus Room or maybe find a way to sort those who need accompanists. I'll keep thinking on it...
We talked about how the festival will be a Masked Event and that all students/chaperones/teachers/and judges will need to comply with those requests. Students will be allowed to remove their masks for their performance but must replace them one completed.
I encourage you to have your students start recording their IEs so that in the event of a last minute quarantine they could still send in a video of their IE which the judges in the room would be able to evaluate and score. We will fine tune and send out instructions on how to do that - this is a last minute emergency contingency not just available for little Susie who didn't feel like getting up early enough to catch the bus.
We agreed that IEs will be FOUR ACROSS THE BOARD except for Playwriting which has 10 entries per troupe. So that means your troupe can send 4 Solo Musicals, 4 Monologues, 4 Publicity Designs, etc, etc, etc...
Students have come up with a few themes and should be voting and deciding upon those this week, I'll update everyone once we know what they are but I'm proud to report that none of them are Pizza or Shapes!
There will be a variety of Food Trucks available at our festival so lunch is on your own. I will provide menus and options as soon as I have them all locked in and I will provide dinner for everyone as part of the festival. I was thrilled that you all ranked Closing Ceremonies as a matter of high importance and will make sure we have a plan in place for that - we decided that we were all okay with the judges choosing a Critic's Choice from amongst the Top Honors of each room to allow for a nice (but not overly long) Closing Ceremonies. We all agreed to abide by the judges' choices and to be supportive and excited about whoever is chosen.
I'm sure there are other things I've forgotten to include so please feel free to remind me (either message me privately or hit that shiny Reply All button).
HERE IS MY FINAL THING WHAT I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT BY THE END OF TODAY:
If you are planning on attending FATE, please let me know by the end of today. It may still be up in the air but if you think there's a possibility that you'll be able to attend then let me know so I can get some rooms set aside for us. Randall needs this information tomorrow so I need to get it to him today, I apologize for letting this deadline sneak up on me I know a few of you have been doing your best to remind me and keep me focused on it but I got overwhelmed and stressed about our meeting and festival stuff (along with the day to day nonsense and stress of teaching and directing) so I apologize for that.
Thank you for making it this far into my email - I apologize for this dump of information, if your day is anything like mine it has probably taken you multiple periods to get this far.
Please look over the info from our meeting and figure out if you need to respond to my last request about FATE and then take a deep breath, realx, and go about the rest of your day secure in the knowledge that you're where you're supposed to be and doing what you're supposed to do and that, even if you don't hear or feel it, you are appreciated and valued.
Have an amazing day, everyone - watch out for crazy weather and flooding! #FloridaProblems
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Jason Blanks
District One Chair
Florida State Thespians