By MEGAN SMITH

Staff Writer

Teachers and students from the department of theatre in the School of Performing Arts will travel to the Arkansas State Thespian Festival to recruit potential theater majors and teach high school students some tools of the trade.

The group of about 19 members will head to the festival Feb. 26-28 at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. The festival features high school students competing in solo, duet and troop competitions, as well as participating in the wide variety of theater workshops.

Up until this year, the majority of the theater faculty has not gone to the festival, Cherrie Sciro, coordinator of theatre and an associate professor of speech and theatre, said.

“This is so completely different," Sciro said. "We are actually bringing Louisiana Tech to them rather than them coming to Tech.”

Recruitment is one of the main reasons for attending such festivals, Sciro said. “The idea is to intrigue students and offer them a visit to the campus, and to see a show and the town,” Sciro said. “We sell Tech as a package, not just the department of theatre.”

Recruitment is part of the reason, Sciro said, the department of theatre has improved.

“Our theatre department here and the caliber of productions have grown tremendously over the past 12 years,” Sciro said. “One of the reasons for this is because a lot of the students that come here are hand selected.”

Sciro said finding prospective students is one of the things that helps keep departments going.

“Recruitment is really nothing if you do not have retention,” Sciro said. “That is one of the reasons I believe in bringing students with us, because these kids get a real good feel of what they walk into when they see our students.”

Sciro said they will be doing many different workshops including stage movement, stage management, acting and directing workshops.

“By the end of the day we are going to be worn out, while these kids are just vying for more,” Sciro said.

Louisiana is not a state that has a great deal of theater introduced in its junior high and high schools, Sciro said.

“Arkansas, Texas and even Mississippi have a far higher quality of students and trained theater practitioners,” Sciro said. “So we have to go to other states for recruitment, specifically Arkansas and Texas. We do very well in those two states.”

Macy Helms, a graduate assistant in the department of theatre, said the department usually sees positive results from attending these festivals.

“We are hoping to find what our department needs there and hoping that we are what they need,” Helms said.

Recruitment through students, Helms said, is a very good idea and works better. Helms also said these festivals are great ways to find potential students.

“I sort of got recruited to Tech through one of these festivals,” Helms said. “I had Tech as one of my choices, but at the festival I decided Tech was where I wanted to be.”

Sciro said they have future plans of Tech having other similar programs.