This past Saturday was a yearly gathering of thespians in which students all around Oregon came together to compete in improv. This competition is dubbed “Instafest.”
Successfully hosted at WHS last year, this year took quite a turn, a long turn south to Grants Pass, Oregon. Troupe 5452 saw this four-hour drive and welcomed the challenge, sending four brave soldiers to take on this voyage.
The trek to Grants Pass proved to be a long, yet non-treacherous journey, many hours spent speeding down the highway with an impromptu stop to refill a diminishing gas tank.
Junior Taylor Nichols had competed in an Instafest before; however, it had been the one at her home school. “Being at a different school, it was all new and different. It felt a little more like a big whole event because of the fact that I had to, like, go far,” she explained.
Upon entrance to the school, one thing was clear: it was incredibly confusing to navigate. The crew found themselves walking down unknown halls, opening doors in the hopes they could find their X marks the spot–Grants Pass Performing Arts Center (PAC).
With the help of a kind man, the PAC was finally found, Wilsonville one of the final schools to arrive.
After settling down into the cushioned chairs of their PAC, something was quickly noticed: middle schoolers. The PAC had a collection of both middle schoolers and high schoolers, with signs depicting each of the schools visiting, five high schools and five middle schools. The sheer amount came as a surprise to Wilsonville thespians. Their Instafest had more of an 80/20 ratio of high schoolers to middle schoolers, rather than 50/50.
Stevie Binns found the larger amount of tweens made “the experience a lot more lowkey, cause there was no pressure, like ‘oh my god, you guys are my peers. I have to be cool around you.’ With middle schoolers, they just don’t care as much. They’re a lot more fun.”
Instafest splits all the attendants into teams of about 7-8 people. These teams are then given an hour of “rehearsal time” in which they are to make a five-minute scene based on the inspiration of a random prop and sentence. These scenes can also draw inspiration from the event’s overall theme, which was ”Halloween.”
Nichols’ group was given a rainbow apple pop-it and a sentence regarding trees. Inspiration struck quickly as they grabbed the reins and formed their scene seamlessly, the story revolving around “evil apple trees. They were kidnapping trick-or-treaters and making them into apple trees.”
Binns’ team had a few bumps in the road, with some members challenging the abilities of others. However, given a frying pan and a quote resembling “if I may let me take you on a strange journey,” the group cooked up on tasty scene. The outline followed “these chef adventurers going into a cave and seeking ingredients. This magical wizard told them to defeat a dragon who was guarding all the ingredients, and the wizard gave them a frying pan to defeat the dragon.”
These scenes are then presented to two different groups of judges over the course of a couple of hours. Scores are then tallied up with six teams chosen as finalists, who are given one last challenge.
The curveball: one of you is now a zombie.
The six finalist teams stormed the stage, challenged to switch their scene to now include one character as a zombie, with the little time they were given.
After the performances, a top three was chosen, with third place including one Ethan Spisak. Binns recalled an overwhelming feeling that “he was really awesome and cool, and I felt very proud of him and proud of our troupe, and it was awesome and he did awesome.”
Nichols describes the greatest joy in going as “Getting to connect with people who do the same stuff that we do in high school theater, except they’re from all around the state, and we don’t know them.”
When interacting with all this new talent, “you kind of realize, like, how similar all of the thespian troops are, but then also, how different they work.”