Mayo Students Act Up…And End Up Going To State (VIDEO)

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Rochester Mayo's Stage Door, the school's dramatic arts club, is heading up to state...or at least, thanks to the Coronavirus, their link is heading up to state. And that's why this is such an impressive First Time at State for Mayo's Stage Door.

During the pandemic, "Gossip: Virtual Edition by Brian Hampton, produced by special arrangement with Pioneer Drama Service, Denver, Colorado, became the 1AA Section Champion in the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) One Act Play competition."

And that's without setting foot on a competition stage. Each actor in their home, in front of a camera with a good microphone, acted out the one-act play in one take, and sent the link to that video off to compete with links from all over Minnesota.

Kim Hill, the Program Director, said

“Every school competing had to turn in a 35 minute or less recording of a performance without editing. Characterization was more important than ever, because the students were up close (on a screen) to our audience. The students dug in deep to this skill to make sure our facials, body movement, and mannerisms were on point.”

On KROC NEWS yesterday I asked the assembled members of the Mayo High School production, that's Kim Hill, Emma Bransford, Darien Hilmerson, Alyssa Keller, and Will Laudon, what happens next...at state. Does their one-act compete again, and I got the most interesting and marvelous answer.

No. Click play and you'll hear Will Laudon explain once you're at State, the competition ends and you get recognized for your success, you celebrate collaboration, and meet fellow stage lovers. (Scroll down for transcript)

Curious about how this all looks as a finished product? Thanks to one of their supporters, they've made special arrangements to show it one more time.

• See it Friday, February 12th at 7 PM on the Mayo Stage Door YouTube channel (click here to get there).
• MSHSL One-Act Play Live Youtube awards and critiques, as well as the online program for the festival, can be found at https://www.mshsl.org/sports-and-activities/one-act-play
• Donations to Mayo Stage Door can be made at https://www.4giving.com/donation/2F47

Hear the entire conversation by clicking play on the podcast. The first part is a conversation with Rochester Magazine's Steve Lange. Mayo Stage Door comes on in the last 10 minutes.

As always, if you have a comment, complaint, or concern about something I wrote here, please let me know: james.rabe@townsquaremedia.com

AUTOMATIC TRANSCRIPTION - May not match recording exactly. 

James Rabe (00:00): What's the next step. And when do we find out when we send you roses and stuff?

Will Laudon (00:04): I think to our extent, I think once, once we kind of get to this state, isn't really called the state competition because at the, at the state level, they call like a festival when everyone kind of comes and there's judges, but the judges at that point really only give critique and they don't necessarily rank the shows.

So I think that's probably, that's like a really cool aspect about state is when we go, it's like a whole like collaboration and like, we're just like enjoying each other's artworks. But, uh, there is like a special distinction which we can get, which is called like a starred performance. And I think there's, uh, like maybe like one, two, maybe three starred performances out of like the, how many sections come.

And that's just like showing like, wow, like you guys did like a really good job with this performance. Like, and then you get like a lacked, but next to like, uh, your little trophy with the picture and everything, but yeah, that's kind of it on Saturday. We have our awards, we have our live critique and that's the state competition for state festival.

James Rabe (00:59): That's that's, that's really cool. Is there anything else you'd like to mention anything

Kim Hill (01:02): And anybody is welcome to watch the YouTube from the Minnesota state high school league. Um, the critique and awards on Saturday, it starts at one 30 off the Minnesota state high school league website for fi for one act play. The other thing is I was just talking to, um, my student director today and these guys don't even know this yet. We are going to, um, go ahead and purchase another royalties for the show, um, so that we can re re show this on, on our male stage door, YouTube channel.

We are going to use the cut that we used to get to state. We do accept donations. We had some amazingly generous donors this year that purchased ring lights and cameras and microphones sets, professional microphone sets and things so that each of the kids could set up a mini studio right there in their space.

Kim Hill (01:55): Um, people need something right now and people were generous to give to us. So we want to give to others. So, um, Friday night at seven o'clock on male stage doors, YouTube channel, and we will be putting up our recording of what we submitted that earned us the trip to say festival. And, um, with that, there is also a code that, um, for a donation site, if people want to make a donation to Mayo stage store, um, theaters generally revolve around their box office and what they bring in.

And this year we can't have a box office and we didn't feel right charging people in a time that it was so difficult. Um, the cast kind of voted and we decided since everything had been provided for us financially, for the show, we weren't gonna charge for it. Um, but people can go on there on Friday night at seven on Mayo stage door on YouTube and, uh, take a peek at what we submitted for our tournament and what got us up to state. And, um, Ben Saturday, keep your fingers crossed for us and feel free to join us, to find out how we did with the actual festival.

Listen to James Rabe and Jessica Williams Weekday from 6 - 10 AM on Y-105 FM

Nowt hat you've read and enjoyed that story, it's time for a little road trip to Wisconsin and one of the most amazing homes you've ever seen...and yes, I said Wisconsin!