2021 NHETG THEATRE FESTIVAL

Dear Theatre Educators,

As many of you would most likely suspect, the New Hampshire Educational Theatre Guild’s board has come to the conclusion that we will not be able to offer a traditional theatre festival this year. There are just too many unknowns and barriers in our collective way to make this possible.

However, the NHETG has developed an alternate, non-competitive, virtual format. We hope it will provide an opportunity for our theatre students around the state, especially our seniors, to have a safe, worthwhile, festival experience in this time of COVID.

The 2021 New Hampshire State Theatre Festival format is as follows:

• Schools will prepare a play that is a maximum of ten minutes at their home location in whatever format they deem necessary.

• Schools will acquire all the traditional necessary performance rights as well as a video/streaming license.

• Schools will video record the play and submit it to the NHETG no later than February 21st, by 5pm.

• The board will then hire respondents (adjudicators) who will screen these videos and then record a video response of roughly 3-5 minutes.

• Each school, during initial registration, will sign up to attend a virtual festival on a specific Saturday in March (either the 6th, the 13th or 20th).

• These virtual festivals will start at 1:00pm, and will require all students to be in attendance together at their own schools to view the performance of approximately six plays (including their own) and the professional responses. (See schedule below.)

• Each participating student will require their own computer and internet access at their native school.

• There will be three blocks of shows, all placed on youtube or similar platform, for the school to playback at the designated time(s). At the end of each block, each student will log into a pre-assigned Google Meet to attend an online student forum, lasting roughly 20 minutes. We estimate that there will be about six forums per festival.

• At the end of the festival, we will have the respondents present all-star company awards for performances and design. Potentially even for video production.

• As there will be no state festival, we will not be selecting any advancements. However, we will then post all of the festival entries on nhetg.org for the participating schools to view.

We will be providing this festival free of charge to all participating schools. The registration form is below. We plan to keep it open only until December 31st. However if demand is high, we may need to cap the number of participants, so we ask that you please do not delay in registering your school. If at any point you need details clarified, do not hesitate to contact a member of the board.

We have fashioned much of our format after the New England Drama Council’s planned virtual festival.

For the NEDC festival, details are still in process, but schools may submit a short video (ten minutes maximum) featuring scenes from a production being worked on this year, preferably an original/devised work or a piece in the public domain, or any student work you’d like to showcase. They plan to host these videos and supplement with live webinars and discussion forums. The event will take place sometime in the spring (dates are not finalized), but we ask interested schools to complete an entry form at this LINK by December 31, 2020. More details will follow in the early part of 2021.

We look forward to this unique endeavor, and we hope you will join us.

Sincerely,

Scott Giessler

President, NHETG

THE FALL STUDENT WORKSHOPS

The NHETG also sponsors Theatre Workshops at Plymouth State University in the fall. Whether your interests lie on stage or behind the scenes, this day of workshops has something for everyone. Here is the first opportunity of the school year for high school theatre programs to get to know each other, and learn a great deal about their craft in the process.