International Thespian Society

The International Thespian Society (ITS) is an honor society for high school and middle school theatre students. It is a division of the Educational Theatre Association. Thespian troupes serve students in grades 9-12; Junior Thespian troupes serve students in grades 6 through 8. A few famous ITS alumni include Tom Hanks, Val Kilmer, James Marsters, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Stephen Schwartz.^[1] Festivals are held annually at the state and national levels. Each June the organization holds the International Thespian Festival. For 25 years it was held at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. As of 2019 it is being held at Indiana University-Bloomington where the first ITF was held in 1941. Membership currently stands at approximately 139,000 student members across 5,000 schools. The one millionth Thespian was inducted in 1976 and the two millionth Thespian was inducted in 2009. As of 2019, there have been over 2.4 million Thespians inducted.