Diamond Bar High School theater students had the opportunity to showcase their talents in the arts at the Fullerton College High School Theatre Festival, with three students earning mentions when a YouTube awards ceremony was held March 27.
This year’s competition required that students turn in their submission, whether it be a design or performance, to teachers at Fullerton College, who judged the hundreds of entries. Freshman Eden Wright placed in the top 18 out of more than 200 musical theater submissions for her performance of “Astonishing” from the “Little Women” musical. She said she chose to compete in musical theater because singing is her strong suit. Before recording the performance, she’d been practicing for nearly a year.
“I’ve done musical theatre since I was in 7th grade and I’ve been singing for my whole life, so musical theatre was the most obvious choice,” Wright said.
To prepare for her submission, Wright said she focused on polishing and reviewing her song in order to make it as best as she possibly could for the final submission.
Additionally, senior Kayla Lam received second place for graphic design. Despite not having prior experience in graphic design in particular, Lam decided to give it a try since she wanted to put her digital art skills to use. For her submission, she had to create a poster for a show of her choice and an essay explaining the design. She selected “The Wedding Singer” since she was already a part of the DBHS crew for its own production of the show.
“To prepare, other than picking the show I had to design for, I had to look up simple tutorials on graphic design since I had never actually done it before,” Lam said via Instagram. “Other things I did to prepare were just finding references, making drafts, and figuring out how I would actually execute the design.”
Lam’s experience with digital art helped her in graphic design since she was already familiar with the programs needed to create her designs as well as knowing how to utilize shadows, lighting and colors appropriately. In addition, she said she got tips from a friend with more experience in graphic design. After creating her poster for the competition, she submitted it to Google Drive with her essay explanation.
“I actually do digital art as a hobby, so I figured I might as well put all of those hours of drawing to use,” Lam said. “I was also curious how/if my different art skills would help me with graphic design since they’re similar yet very different.”
More schools participated in the competition this year than normal because they didn’t have to worry about traveling expenses. But as Lam was facing a larger number of competitors, she said she didn’t expect to place. Thus, she recalled being extremely excited at her achievement upon hearing the news that she secured second place.
“I remember I had to stop what I was doing when I got the message and I immediately texted my friends the good news,” Lam said. “I felt like I was going to burst [because] I was so happy and proud of myself.”
Besides Lam and Wright, senior Amanda Esparza also placed in the finals, receiving third place in makeup design with her submission of three makeup looks for characters in “The Wedding Singer.” For each design, she included both a sketch and a photo of the final applied look, alongside a typed explanation of the style and products chosen.