EC Glass High School Drama Department Wins State Theatre Championship

Reston, VA, November 2, 2008 - The EC Glass High School Drama Department won the 2008 Virginia Theatre Association (VTA) State Secondary School Theatre Championship during the annual VTA conference in Reston, Va. on Oct. 31-Nov. 2. Produced by the school’s advanced acting and advanced technical theatre classes, Glass performed the premier of a multi-media play, Ellis Island: The Dream of America which was created and composed by Peter Boyer. By winning the VTA state championship, EC Glass will represent Virginia at the Southeastern Theatre Conference annual competition in Birmingham, AL in March, 2009.

In addition to winning the state secondary school theatre championship, EC Glass was selected the state-runner-up in the VTS secondary school technical theatre competition. The Glass tech theatre students finished one-point behind the winning school, the Appomattox Regional Governor's School for the Arts and Technology in Petersburg.

Individual tech theatre honors went to Ben Soldate, who won 1st place in Scenery Design, and Caroline Springer, who won 1st place in Costume Design for the second straight year.

The annual VTA secondary school competition, the largest state high school theatre festival in the country, includes performance by 44 public, private, and parochial schools from across the state. After two days of competition, four finalists are chosen; after those schools perform a second time, the five adjudicators select a winner and a runner-up. This year, Grassfield High School of Chesapeake was named runner-up and the other two finalists were Stafford High School in Fredericksburg and Meadowbrook High School in Richmond.

This is the seventh state theatre championship for EC Glass, the most of any school in Virginia. EC Glass has been in the finals 13 times, being named runner-up four times.