Saturday, February 16th: The Glenbard West Forensics team had their State Meet and received exceptional results.  Three events qualified for the State competition, with Performance in the Round earning third place.

In addition to these results at State, qualifying for State is an honorable event in and of itself. To qualify for State, individuals were selected from the Regional Meet competition.  According to Annie Feazel, a sophomore member of the Performance in the Round series, after you have been assigned to an event, “you have to place 4th or above in your event to move onto Sectionals” and at Sectionals, “you have to get 3rd place or above in your event to qualify for State.”

The categories that individuals can participate in range widely, including fourteen different events. As stated by Elizabeth Bassett, senior captain of the Forensics team, “For the State series, each school selects their top player in each event so [there is only] one entry per event.  At tournaments, each member will compete against five other competitors of the same event three times, each time receiving a rank from a judge,” a score of 1 to 6, with 1 being the most exceptional. Thus, a low overall score in Forensics, like golf, is what individuals need to aim for.

There are three preliminary rounds and those who are part of the top six competitors would qualify for their final round, determining the tournament champion and the other rankings for the other fourteen events. These team events include individual and group events. As further explained by Bassett, individual events can range from Informative Speaking to Humorous Duet Acting, showing how topics can be either serious, humorous, or anything in between. There are also events that require minimal preparation such as Impromptu Speaking.

Glenbard West events qualifying for State include the Performance in the Round (PIR) event, and the individual events of Dramatic Interpretation and Prose performed by Elizabeth Bassett and Chloe Karp, respectively. The Performance in the Round event was composed by Shae Regan, Finn Bender, Maxwell Alexander, Colleen Shanahan, Deepa Phuyal, David Benjamin, Kathleen Taback, Tommy Sear, Treeya Desai, Luisa Metz, Annie Feazel, and Elyssa Fischer.

According to Maxwell Alexander, a member in the PIR event, PIR is “essentially a 15-minute play where the cast is inside a big circle, being surrounded by the audience.” He further explained that this is a rather intense performance as there are “obviously no intermissions, [meaning] you need to change scenery seamlessly and you really [cannot]  leave room for error in the performance.”

Finn Bender, another member of the PIR, expanded that the piece they performed for the event, “Fireworks from the Above,” circled around flight attendants: focusing between the interactions of “one flight attendant [who] is [the epitome of] ‘smile and be kind’ [and another attendant who] hates their job.” Finn embraced the flight attendant with the latter role.

For individual events, Elizabeth Bassett explained her Dramatic Interpretation performance was a “retelling of a dramatic story through a character’s monologue,” while also acting out different characters in her story.  She performed “An Impossible Decision,” a story that follows a humanitarian who must make a choice about who to save from the Rwandan Genocide. The character has to deal with her boss, the immigration officer in charge of the flights back to the United States, and her guilt for choosing who to bring and who to leave behind.

Chloe Karp was involved in the Prose event where she performed “Uncle Louie,” a story revolving around a woman showing her uncle around New York City while trying to grow accustomed to the fact that she is moving halfway across the country to Texas. Her uncle eventually pushes her to take this chance.

After a hard day’s work in Peoria performing these interesting and entertaining pieces, Performance in the Round earned third place in addition to the other exceptional performances that were taking place.  Congratulations to the Glenbard West Forensics team!