General Rules and Guidelines
These Rules are specific to DISTRICT XI Festival. For the STATE rules please see the state website at www.floridathespians.com
Selection of One Act Plays
- Entries may come from published plays, original works, or cuttings from full length plays. Both musicals and non musicals are acceptable. Readers’ theatre or chamber theatre pieces are not allowed.
- Each Troupe is permitted to submit only one entry.
- There is a one year performance moratorium on plays presented at the State Festival. Please see the list in the link above.
- Proof of the payment of royalties must accompany registration. Written permission for cuttings and/or original work must be included if applicable.
- The playwright must be included on the registration form.
- For a one act play to perform at the State Festival it must be performed at and receive a Superior rating at the district level, and be chosen by the judges as a state selected play.
- All schools must be currently affiliated with the International Thespian Society to perform at Districts.
- The number of Superior rated plays permitted to showcase at the State Festival will be determined by the following formula:
- 1-6 plays performed at District— 1 play sent to State.
- 7- 12 plays performed at District— 2 plays sent to State.
- 13-18 plays performed at District— 3 plays sent to State.
- 19-24 plays performed at Districts— 4 plays sent to State.
- 25 or more plays performed at Districts— 5 plays sent to State.
- State selected plays are chosen as follows:
- One show will be selected as Critic's Choice by the judges. This show must have earned a Superior of any score and will automatically be eligible for state.
- The remaining state selected shows based on the number in the formula above will be selected by overall numerical score.
- One runner-up will be selected based on overall score in case one of the selected shows cannot attend State. This has to be decided by the state mail in date for registration.
At the discretion of the District Chair, violation of any One Act rule at the District Festival will prevent a Troupe’s selection for One Act performance at the State Festival, and may prevent that troupe from performing for a period of one year.
Preliminary and General Considerations
- All students involved with the one act must be currently enrolled students attending classes at the same school as the Troupe presenting the one act. Home schooled students may be included in a troupe’s production if those students reside within the boundaries of that school. An exception will be made for any Troupe Director who runs the lights or sound for the production.
- A written critique of each participating Troupe’s one act performance will be given to the Troupe Director.
- The cast of the play being performed at the State Festival must be the same as the one performed at the District Festival. The State Director must be informed of any changes due to extreme circumstances. Permission to make such a change is at the discretion of the State Director.
- The performance appearing at the State Festival should be presented as closely as possible as it was performed at the District Festival which should be performed as closely as possible to the one approved by the school’s principal. If the production does not meet community standards at the troupe’s school, it will not meet them anywhere else.
- One Act Plays must be asterisked if needed in the registration system.
- One act plays must be directed by the Troupe Director as listed on official Troupe documents, a full time school employee who is an EDTA Member, or a currently enrolled student under the Director's supervision.
- Five programs for each presented play should be provided by the Troupe. These programs will be collected at the Stage Manager/Directors’ meeting. Additional programs may be made available to the audience at the Troupe’s discretion.
- No advertising may appear in programs distributed during the festival.
- Prior to a performance, no chewing gum, drinks, food, or smoking is permitted on stage, backstage, or in the loading dock.
- All remnants of any food or drink consumed in the dressing rooms must be removed before the room is vacated. Dressing rooms must be left at least as clean as they were when each troupe occupied them.
One Act Technical Information
We use a standard lighting plot for our festival that is similar to what you will encounter at state. Click the link below to download it for your referance and design.
One Act Lighting Plot
Use this layout as a reference for your students to familiarize themselves with the console at the venue. All lighting will be set up on faders both individually and in full and half stage groups. There is no programming allowed.
One Act Lighting Board Layout
One Act Technical Suggestions
There are normally 2 technical judges for One Acts. One will sit with the performance judges to judge tech from the audience perspective, one will sit backstage.
The judges do not judge for QUANTITY of tech, they judge QUALITY. Just because you do a hundred cues does not mean you will get a superior from them, nor does only having a lights up and down cue mean you will get a low score. They are judging based off of design AND execution.
The backstage judge will be looking for how smoothly your crew operates both before the 40 minute time and during. How well did they get into the wings? How did they move the set on to stage? How organized were they when they brought it back to the box. They will also be judging your stage manager. How was the prompt book set up? How well did they call the cues? How did they handle something going wrong? Was the crew acting professionally when they had nothing to do backstage? Is everyone acting in a safe manor?
The front of house judge will be looking for other, more design based choices. How smoothly did the scene change go? Did you have dead space where maybe you could have put some music? How did the lighting concept work? Could you have done more than just a wash on stage to make things more effective? Was the set effective and useful for the production, or was it overly complicated? How well did the costumes fit the idea of the show? How did the make up work for the show? Were details overlooked by the director?
Remember, the judges are judging the directing choices as much as the performers. Because these judges are judging two very different aspects of a show, it is good to remember that their ratings could be very different.
If we we have an issue with a judge not showing up, the single tech judge would be responsible for running back and forth and judging all of these aspects.