Hate is Not and Iowan Value

At Thespian Festival last year, I auditioned to be in the Iowa All-Chapter show, The Laramie Project. I got cast as 1 of 16 actors and received my script about a month later. We had then had a second audition for parts sometime in December-ish and then found out maybe in February who we were?

Anyway, we spent about a week rehearsing in July and then put on the actual show for Thespian Festival this year in November. At that particular show we were being adjudicated to go to International Thespian Conference. It was quite a sad day when we found out Friday that we were not accepted to go. Kind of a bummer that neither of the shows I was in got accepted (I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change and The Laramie Project).

The Laramie Project was quite possibly one of the best shows I have ever been in. I got to work with some of the top actors/actresses in the state and we got to spend a week just purely bonding and building upon our acting skills. Our "summer camp" was spent with 16 hour days running through the script, working with acting coaches scene by scene, doing runthroughs, and eating. You can imagine how tired we were by the end of the week.

This experience let me meet some of the coolest people I have ever met in my life. I am pretty sure the people of the Pleasant Valley region are the most fun people I have ever met in my life. One of them, who I injured many times unintentionally, and I spent just about the entire camp laughing, and this continued to the actual Thespian Festival practices. A person from Des Moines could potentially be the kookiest, goofy kid I have ever met in my life. He spent the summer camp making inappropriate jokes and provided the comic relief for the week.

I just wanna say that I miss everyone greatly and I am bummed that we aren't going on to Internationals. But oh well, I know we will all remain friends even after the fact. This little bump in the road (not being accepted) will not pull us apart.

Will you stay together?