McMurry Theatre Students Make Their Way to The Annual TxETA conference

McMurry Theatre Education students got a little bit of a second summer as they made their way to the beaches of Galveston, TX this September. While a beach visit is quite a reasonable excuse to make the six and half hour drive, these students came for the annual TxETA (Texas Educational Theatre Association) “TheatreFest” conference.

TxETA summarizes their organization with this mission statement; that they “strive to use all the resources available to strengthen […] teachers and build on existing programs around the state to continue to improve the quality of theatre education in the state of Texas”. With TheatreFest, teachers are given an opportunity to promote their departments to visiting high school students as well as both teach and attend various workshops in order to better each other’s programs.

McMurry’s Theatre Ed. students ran a booth marketing their program to incoming students and also attended TheatreFest workshops. These ranged from more active classes concerning techniques like stage combat or warming up a group to informative sessions discussing how to run and financially manage a theatre program or how to approach and prepare for high school one-act.

The Theatre Department’s two professors, Neena McLain and Zach Frizzell, also attended, with Frizzel teaching a workshop and McLain being on the board of higher education. McLain revealed that the board “discusses challenges that are unique to teaching high school theatre”. Outside of this, she spent most of her time recruiting new students, as “recruitment is McMurry Theatre’s biggest benefit through TheatreFest”. According to her, it’s the most advantageous way for a theatre program to promote itself, as the department is able to “talk to people in a way that they might not be able to otherwise”, as every potential student there is guaranteed to be interested in a department.

McLain stated that the best part of this opportunity for Theatre Ed. majors was that it “provides a great opportunity to connect themselves to principles and other teachers as well as prepare through workshops for their future careers.” This is her biggest reason for bringing along majors, as this is absolutely a stepping stone for a future theatre director’s first job.

While McMurry’s theatre majors certainly had a lot to enjoy concerning everything Galveston, the opportunity to bolster their future careers made TxETA TheatreFest an worthwhile adventure! For more information on TxETA, feel free to visit https://www.txeta.com.