Fourteen Valencia High School Theater students took third place for Ensemble Scene at the Utah Shakespeare Festival earlier this month.  Stephen Whelan, Valencia High School’s theater teacher, said he had been looking for a place for his students to perform while the school’s theater is undergoing a $1.2 million renovation when he found out about the Shakespeare Festival. He immediately contacted the organizer of the festival to learn more about it and see if it was a good fit for his students.   “He told us how much he’d love to have us be part of the festival,” said Whelan. “It’d be great to have a school from California come – it’s happened before, but it’s not very often. It’s usually just the kids from the Utah schools up there, and there’s up to 3,000 students that participate.”  Whelan said after speaking to the organizer he thought his students could fit right into the performances. He said his students perform at a very high level and he believed they were ready for a high-demand performance.   For the festival, the students prepared a piece from “Romeo and Juliet” that consisted of the Prologue scene followed by the fight scene between Tybalt and Mercutio where Tybalt kills Mercutio, so Romeo kills Tybalt.   Whelan said they changed the storyline to be set in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the late 1970s and early 1980s when Protestants and Catholics did not get along.   “We worked on Northern Irish accents, and we treated it like it took place in Belfast in the late ’70s, early ’80s. It was kind of like punk rock, with a lot of rock and roll T-shirts and backward hats and, of course, Doc Martin boots and ripped T-shirts and jeans and safety pins,” said Whelan.   Since the theater is under construction until early February, the students had to work in a smaller space than they are used to. Whelan said they had been practicing in a small classroom space that they took the desks out of. Despite the space being a lot smaller than what they were set to perform on, Whelan said his students pulled it together.   According to Whelan, Jan Daisher, the director of special programs and professional development for the William S. Hart Union High School District, helped the group pay for their trip by getting grant funds from Title IV. Title IV is a source of federal financial aid for students pursuing higher education. With the grant, the students did not have to pay out of pocket for the trip.  Being one of the smaller groups to perform, the students were slightly shocked when the awards came around and they were selected for third place.    “We were excited that we got third place because we had seen so much of the others’ work that we didn’t think we were probably going to get anything. So, it was a surprise,” said Whelan.   He added that he felt his students got to experience the commitment, collaboration, cooperation, sharing and creativity it takes to be in theater. The students were able to watch other schools perform their interpretations of Shakespeare’s work and compare it to their own.   He hoped that watching and competing in this festival opens the door for his students and gets them to open their minds to pursuing acting careers.   “We usually want to get the first place, but because of the high level of competition and what we were up against, and what I feel my kids are capable of in the face of these programs that have thousands of students,” said Whelan. “I just was very proud of my students, and I think they were proud of themselves as well.”  The post Valencia HS theater takes 3rd place in Shakespeare festival  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.