The North Carolina Theatre Conference (NCTC) play festival is an event where theater students from over 100 schools gather to showcase their performance skills.

“Students go and they perform in front of other students, and they have an adjudication process where they have judges give them feedback on their performance,” said Drama teacher Bernadette MacLeod.

East Meck’s Advanced Theater traveled to Rocky River High School in Mint Hill to take part in the event this year. There they performed a play called Antigone Now, based on the story, the Greek Tragedy of Antigone. 

The performance impressed the judges so much the group was rated superior overall, the highest rating you can get at NCTC. Sammy Bost and Mercy Kinsey also won the Excellence in Acting award, and the whole group won a Theater Arts Award for Choral Work, based on how well they performed together.

“Just hearing the feedback was really really helpful to see where our strengths were, and they really improved a lot on vocal projection and articulation,” said Macleod. “They got really wonderful feedback about how good they did, and so that was also something that was really cool for them to see. To have been working on something really hard and get complimented on it and see it come to fruition.”