Coming into this years Class Acts, the junior class looked poised to compete well. However, in the few weeks leading up to the competition, many members of the play missed practice due to sickness or sports-related events. Despite all of this, they pulled it together to take first place in the annual competition.

“This year’s Class Acts is the best I’ve seen since I’ve been here,” theatre teacher George Bennett said. “There were many new faces involved and we had a great response in audience turnout.”

The plays were judged by a panel of four judges, who ranked the plays and gave out awards after all four were performed. The judges included Nick Liacopoulos, Leslie Chekin, Jennifer Sharp and John Hawes.

Junior Betsy Cohan directed the freshman play, “The Final Bow”. Junior Zain Kamara directed the sophomore play, “A Touch of Evil”. Junior Skye Lindberg directed her class’s play, “The Apple”. Finally, senior Max Talley directed his class’s play, “Going to School”.

While the judges decided the winner, Bennett took advantage of the time by inducting 20 new thespians into the International Thespian Honor Society.

By the end of this ceremony, the judges had submitted their results. First announced was best supporting actress, which was awarded to freshman Julia Nguyen. Junior Andy Riddle won best supporting actor, junior Laura Hackfeld won best actress and, last but not least, junior Kevin Tran won best actor.

After all the individual awards had been given out, the only thing left to announce was the one thing everyone was waiting to hear: the winner of Class Acts. In the end, the best play/best director award went to Lindberg and the juniors.

“I was really proud of our class for pulling together in the last few weeks to make this a great show. We went through some rough patches with people being sick and other theatrical activities going on during our rehearsal time, but overall, I think we did a great job,” Lindberg said. “I was also really proud of Kevin, Laura and Andy for the awards they won and I’m also just really proud of my cast as a whole for working together so well and dealing with me as their director.”

“It went very smoothly, with the only problems being very minor to the production. It was very close to what I had envisioned,” Talley said. “Overall, I think the performance was pretty sweet.”

Although each class only had about a month to prepare its play, they turned out much stronger than in recent years.

“I was totally happy with the way things turned out this year,” Bennett said.