International Thespian Festival Brings Top Students, Educators to UNL Campus

For the 25th year in a row, students and hundreds of their sponsors, educators and chaperones traveled from around the world to the Lied Center for Performing Arts (www.liedcenter.org) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for the annual International Thespian Festival. The young actors represent some of the best and highly-motivated theatrical talent in the U.S. and abroad.

The International Thespian Festival (ITF) is a week-long immersion in the theatre arts, especially for high-achieving middle and high school drama students and their teachers. ITF showcases outstanding school theatre productions on four professional stages and offers a wealth of learning and presentation opportunities encompassing all theatrical disciplines. For more than 50 years, ITF has been the preferred summer theatre experience for students and teachers alike, produced by the Educational Theatre Association and held at UNL. Students 12 and older came from as close as Lincoln, NE and as far away as Singapore to attend.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln city-campus and downtown Lincoln provide an ideal setting for this international festival with a combination of several world-class performing arts facilities, including the Lied Center for Performing Arts, Temple Building, Kimball Recital Hall, Westbrook Music Building and several other academic buildings and residence halls. A 2009 study by the Nebraska Division of Travel and Tourism estimates the annual economic impact of the festival at approximately $560,000 for businesses in the City of Lincoln. The conference is one of the many camps and conferences hosted during the summer at UNL.