Adjudication of secondary school theater festivals

In recent years, I have had the privilege of judging at various levels of the Vermont high school theater festival circuit. Each adjudicator generally has its own set of criteria for what makes a show a winner. These often have to do with acting talent, the sophistication of the material, and the overall thoroughness of the production. While each of these contribute to my award decisions, I don’t necessarily consider them to define a winning program. I use two specific criteria as tiebreakers: student engagement with the material and audience reaction.

There are some productions that are clearly above the rest. A special combination of the right material, the right director and the right actors makes these shows shine. It’s easy to put these performances at the top of my scorecard. The tough decisions come at the next level of competition: those shows that include some of the elements of a great show, but don’t bring them all together in a clear winning performance. They can have a great performance, but poor material; they may have great direction, but poor technical execution. When several shows at a festival are in this middle range, it can be hard to decide how to rank them. At this point, I do my best to base my decisions on the work done by the children, rather than the work done by the adults around them.

For example, in a tiebreaker situation, I prefer to put aside my judgments about acting talent because it’s something that actors have very little control over. Some students are naturally talented, others are not. While a great director can pull off better performances at both ends of the spectrum, students who haven’t been blessed with a great director don’t have that luxury. The same goes for the sophistication of the material: in most cases, it is the adults running the theater program who choose the material to be performed. If students don’t participate in choosing their material, I don’t think they should be judged on that basis. Similarly, it’s the adult director who usually dictates the overall strictness of the production, and I don’t think students should be given an upvote or downvote based on something they have no control over.

Instead, I choose to base my decision on two elements. They are no less subjective than the other possibilities, however I think they separate the work of students from the work of adults.

• Commitment to the subject – Each student shows in their performance a certain level of commitment to the subject. This will be evident regardless of the individual student’s level of talent, the proficiency of their leadership, or the sophistication of the material. When they are engaged, there is a spark and a following that stands out above everything else. I believe this is an item that each and every student has complete control over, so I use it as a key determinant in my award decisions.
• audience reaction – At all levels of theater, a performance is ultimately about providing the audience with an experience that moves them. A show that is technically perfect but does not speak to the heart of the audience is not a successful show; a performance lacking technical expertise but that connects with the public has achieved its goal. In a tiebreaker situation, I always look for audience reaction to help me make a decision: was the audience properly engaged? In a comedy, that means there were genuine laughs in all the right places. In a heartfelt drama, that might mean the audience was so quiet that they even stopped coughing. Audience reaction will vary with each show, but it’s always obvious when the audience is completely enraptured. What makes this element so powerful for me is that the audience only sees what is happening on stage at that moment. It is, in my experience, the element that is most divorced from the work of the adults that surround the performance.

I enjoy awarding high school theater festivals because I get to see teenagers enlightened by theater and the arts. I remember how important those high school productions were to me and I know what formative experiences they can be. It is an honor and privilege to participate in and celebrate high school theater.