RoleAbout at Mission Viejo High School

This Saturday over 400 students from 25 schools from LA, San Diego, and Orange County will compete for a chance to win awards for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in various categories as well as a registration scholarship to attend the California Youth in Theater Day in Sacramento in March 2015.

The event was co-created in 2002 by MVHS drama teacher Kathy Cannarozzi Harris; Festival Chairman, along with Heide Janssen; Festival Coordinator. Their main focus is on character development, thus the name RoleAbout, all about roles. As this festival will take place in the fall (at a time when festivals are sparse), they want to give students a chance to concentrate on creating great characters. Hopefully, this festival will help students become more prepared for your upcoming shows, college auditions, and the festival season in the spring.

What makes this event different from other festivals is that it takes place on one day - prelims in the morning; finals in the afternoon. The categories include; classical monologues, classical scenes, cold reading, contemporary comedic monologues, contemporary comedic scenes, contemporary dramatic monologues, contemporary dramatic scenes, film monologues, film scenes and monologues, original monologues, and song. We employ judges that have proven theatre backgrounds, and incorporate student judges and give them access to the judging rubrics prior to the festival so that they know on what they are being judged.

We hope you’ll check back on this page next week to see the list of winners in each of the categories.