By Marisa McTighe, Assistant Social Media and Distribution Editor
In September of this year, a group of VHS drama students was chosen to present their technical and acting talents at the Luo Hu Youth Drama Month Festival in Shenzhen, China. Seniors Alivia Jones and Emma Rose DeSantis were the two actors, accompanied by sophomore technicians Joel Wiegner and Gillian Kirkpatrick.
The play, “Sophie,” is the true story of a girl who was killed in a car accident on her way to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The play includes excerpts from Sophie’s own journals and poetry.
The island troupe was the opening act for the festival, and the only high school group — the rest were college-aged.
The first night they performed, the audience was primarily composed of people with theater experience, which included a panel of judges.
“[The panel] asked us questions and gave us their feedback and their impressions of the performance,” theater instructor Stephen Floyd said. “The questions were really challenging, and their feedback was very honest … I felt like I was able to learn a lot from them, and as a teacher I’m used to asking the questions and putting the students on the spot … It was really nice to kind of be forced to think on my feet and answer questions, and it just reminded me of what that experience is like for students.”
The audience who came to see the second performance was less theater-oriented. According to Floyd, their reactions were not as enthusiastic, but they were still interested.
“It would be like [if] you went to a movie thinking it was going to be an action film, and instead it turned out to be a foreign film with two people sitting quietly talking to each other, and you had to read subtitles,” Floyd said in an attempt to explain the low level of audience enthusiasm. “One thing I learned from this experience would be to try to pick a play to take to a festival like this that [has] more visual storytelling going on, that [is] less dependent on dialogue and easier for an audience to follow because there [are] more active things happening.”
Overall, the audience was appreciative and respectful of the two performances.
In addition to performing and rehearsing, the group toured the city of Shenzhen, went to an amusement park and sampled the local food.
DeSantis said that one of her favorite parts of the trip was noting the difference between Chinese culture and American culture. She also enjoyed looking at the Chinese architecture.
“Sometimes there were really big new buildings that were completely golden, and then right next to it there would be a very old building,” DeSantis said.
Students held multiple fundraisers to raise money for the trip. These fundraisers included bake sales, a portion of the ticket sales from their Vashon performance of “Sophie” and a silent auction. Many theater-loving community members donated money as well.
The group boarded the plane for China on Nov. 20 and arrived back home on Nov. 28.
Floyd hopes that they can return to China in the future to perform at the same festival.
