View from the top

THIS YEAR’S International Thespian Festival main stage opened with a nontraditional show: a screening of the multi-award-winning feature film Purple Dreams, which documents the journey of Troupe 5634 from the Northwest School of the Arts (Charlotte, N.C.) when they brought the high school premiere of The Color Purple to the ITF main stage in 2013.

As Thespian troupe director and Tony-winner Corey Mitchell put it in the film, the ITF main stage represents “the view from the top” for high school Thespians. The following pages highlight that exhilarating main stage experience, which began last year with national adjudications of dozens of plays and musicals and culminated in 11 main stage productions and a program of 1,100 National Individual Events representing first-rate high school performers and technical talent from across the nation.