Heaster named All State Drama

This year, the Sundance Theatre Troupe (a.k.a. high school drama class) brought a number of acting and technical events to the Wyoming State Thespian Festival held at the University of Wyoming. Our acting events included both novice and varsity monologues and duets and the one-act proscenium (or traditional stage) play “Imperfect Proposal” by Lisa Parry.

In the technical theatre department, we had a talented makeup artist and script writers galore.

For a small 2A school, Sundance fared quite well at the closing awards ceremonies. Compared to some of the larger schools that brought dozens of young thespians, we had only ten actors, but no one would have known it from the number of times we heard our school’s name mentioned.

In the jam-packed UW Arts and Sciences Auditorium, filled with 800 or so dramatic high school students from every corner of the state, “Sundance Secondary” rang out a total of eight times.

Junior Rhianna Heaster received an All-State medal for her acting performance in the play and was also elected to represent Sundance as a State Thespian Officer.

Freshman Emily Oplinger, a first time drama student and actress, received an Honorable Mention for both her novice duet and her performance in our one-act. Sophomore Nate Schommer, also a first year thespian, received Honorable Mention for his acting in the play.

Junior Gavin Robinson, a seasoned second year veteran of the troupe, got an Honorable Mention for both his novice monologue performance and the original duet that he wrote. Senior Kayla Fowler, also a second year drama student, received the Honorable Mention nod for both her acting in the novice duet category and her artistic skills for her creation of a horned Celtic god in the fourth year fantasy makeup category.

The troupe has good reason to be proud of its accomplishments and it must be said that we couldn’t have done it without the help of all of our young actors and actresses, so a big shout out must go to Telsie Comer, Zach Duvall, Dylan Hough, and Titus Schelling for making our play and season a success.