On Jan. 8, theater students from SCHS went to the Missouri State Thespian Conference that was held in Kansas City. The Missouri State Thespian Conference (ThesCon) is a convention held in Kansas City for all Missouri Thespians, where students involve themselves in many theater-based workshops, including those for both acting and tech crew. They can also watch the state-selected shows and one-acts perform, be interviewed by college representatives, and audition for performance-based scholarships. 

Despite the common misconception, the Missouri Thespian Conference is for all aspects of theater, not just acting. 

“So there is something for everybody,” Theater teacher and Thespian Troupe 1171 Director Courtney Denton said.

The workshops include many diverse activities from learning stage makeup for injuries, short writing courses, and circus stunts; some students who attended even learned how to juggle through one such workshop.

“I took a lot of fun makeup classes, like special effects, and I learned how to do cool burn makeup and it was really fun,” sophomore Cheyenne Hayes said.

Other students made their own fun at ThesCon by making connections with other attendees. 

“Jordan and I had brought a camera and a microphone extended to a cord and we went around and asked people questions,” Noah Sutton said, “that’s more or less what we did, is just meet people because that’s what you do, is just talk to people and meet people with similar interests.”

Although ThesCon was a fun experience, they had to leave early because of the snowstorm that hit around 7 pm on Friday, Jan. 10, in Kansas City. This cut their trip short by a day, so the only show they were allowed to see was the high school production of “A Streetcar Named Desire”. A few students felt a bit cheated by the trip’s sudden cutoff.

“I had fun while I was there, but I wish we stayed longer,” Hayes said.

Although they left early, everyone who went still had fun and learned a lot of fun tricks, audition techniques, and much more.

“We go to these really awesome professional workshops, we learn all these new skills, and then all of those things that we learn, we get to bring back and like apply it to what we do here at the school,” Denton said.