On Saturday, October 21, Royal hosted the annual DTASC event for drama students from schools across Southern California.
DTASC is an acronym for Drama Teachers Association of Southern California. DTASC is a competition in which students can compete in seven acting categories and four tech categories.
The seven acting categories are Audition Monologue; Look Ma, No Chairs; Shaw-Goes-Wilde; Small Screen; Top Ten American Plays; Large Group Comedy; and Anything Goes, Open Musical. The four tech categories are Set Design; Light Design; Marketing and Publicity; and Character Costumes. The tech categories are given a topic to base their designs off of. For example, last year’s topic was Alice in Wonderland and this year’s topic was Gothic and Horror.
Sophomore Contessa “Tessa” Cunningham participated in the Shaw-Goes-Wilde category as Mr. Higgins in “My Fair Lady”. “My favorite category to watch was Large Group Comedy, partly due to my sister, Ashlyn, being in the performance, but also the amount of dedication and character work seen in each performance. My favorite category to participate in was of course Shaw-Goes-Wilde,” Cunningham said about watching DTASC.
“As a hosting school, we started planning a couple months ahead of time,” Royal Drama teacher Suzy Jeffords said about hosting DTASC this year. Many students here call her “Mrs. Suzy”.
In addition to planning the event, lunch had to be organized. This organizing included arranged to have schools pre-order and pre-pay for lunches, set up a concession stand, and providing the breakfast and lunch for the judges. There was a lot of ordering items and shopping involved. This was mostly handled by the head parent liaison Beth Miller. “We literally could not have had this event without all of her help and expertise,” Jeffords said about the help she had with planning DTASC. This year, 62 schools participated in DTASC, which is the most schools that have participated in the past ten years. Overall, 1300 students participated in DTASC, 33 of which were from Royal High School.
Congratulations to the Royal Drama Department for getting an honorable mention in Set Design, Costumes and Large Group Comedy and fifth place in Publicity.
