For the first time in six years, the theater program has advanced to State in One-Act Play UIL competitions.

“We’ve gone past [five] rounds now, and at Region we competed against Red Oak, Waxahachie, Newman Smith, and the Colony,” cast member Emily Keegan-Wolf said. “[We’ve been] competing with Newman Smith and the Colony since Districts, so we’ve moved up together with them.”

One-Act Play is a UIL competition in which performers put on only one act of a show. Judges rank the performances in the competition based on different requirements and aspects of the performance. This year, UIL theater went with an ancient Greek play, called The Trojan Women.

“There’s a bunch of different things that they can score you on like your lighting, sound, character development, the relationships the characters have, costumes, everything in tech and everything in acting,” Keegan- Wolf said. “There’s also stuff like professionalism and how well the play is cut, choreography, direction, and how well the direction is followed.”

To qualify for State competition, theater competed against four other schools in UIL Region II.

“There’s usually six shows competing against each other and three judges that each rank the shows separately,” Keegan- Wolf said. “You have to score in the top three to move on, and then the top two go to state.”

The Trojan Women portrays the lives of women in the city of Troy, who were left behind after the Trojan War. Keegan-Wolf has a leading role this year.

“The Trojan Women is the aftermath of the Trojan War,” Keegan-Wolf said. “This year I play Helen of Troy, who’s basically the cause of the war and a fun character to play.”

The cast and crew of the Trojan Women never knew thought they would make it this far, a theater hasn’t advanced to state in many years.

“This is insane,” Keegan-Wolf said. “[I’ve been] in this since freshman year, when we only got to bi-districts, so we haven’t advanced this far in many years when we got to state. Even the thought of going to state is crazy, but it’s really exciting. To have that, and to be recognized, and to have all of these years of work finally pay off feels very good.”