From left to right starting with the front row, Kennedy Gordon and Sinclair Daniel, second row, Sky Garcilasodelavega, Lani Nugent, Amell Bishara, and Ms. Teresa Ring ’03, third row, Lexi Dyer, Dionna Williams, Thea McKay forth row, Tom Usle and Mr. David Needles (Spencer Raines not pictured).
A “DRAMATIC” VICTORY AT DTASC THEATRE FESTIVAL By David Needles, Drama Instructor
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very year, the Drama Teachers Association of Southern California (DTASC) produces a Fall Theatre Festival for high school students. La Salle has competed in this festival five times in the last 10 years. This year, seven students competed at Temecula Valley High School, in the “Musical Collage” category which included Amell Bishara ’16, Lexi Dyer ’16, Sky Garcilasodelavega ’16, Thea McKay ’16, Lani Nugent ’15, Spencer Raines ’16, and Dionna Williams ’15 coached by Jude Lucas. This group of La Salle students made it through the first two rounds of competition. Two students also competed in the “Audition Monologue” category: Sinclair Daniel ’15, won third place and Kennedy Gordon ’15, won fifth place. These two La Salle seniors competed against 146 other students in their same “Audition Monologue”
category from other Southern California high schools including two arts magnet schools. To add to our victory, La Salle was the only school to have two students place in this category. David Needles was the theatre faculty representative who served on the rules committee of the festival and coached the “Audition Monologue” students entered in the competition. The festival has continued to grow over the years with 74 different schools competing in 2014. Our best showing up to now was in the 2012 festival where we had five students competing in the category “Large Scene – Comedy” move on to semi-finals and one student reach the finals in the category “Audition Monologue,” receiving an honorable mention plaque at the closing ceremony.
BRENNAN
W I N S $ 1 0 0 0 S E RV I C E AWA R D
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aylor Brennan ’15 won an ABC Summer of Service Award (in partnership with Youth Service Awards) for $1,000 for creating a lasting, positive change through volunteer and community service projects in his community. The goal of the organization is to recognize young community change-makers, and help them on their mission to help others. Taylor designated the award to La Salle’s Support Our Troops Club, which he founded his freshman year. The Club recently led a school-wide service project to benefit needy military families by filling 126
Thanksgiving food boxes which were delivered to Fort Irwin in Barstow in time for Thanksgiving. Each Box of Love is filled with donated and purchased food items to make Thanksgiving a little bit better for the needy military families of our service men and women. The La Salle Community raised $4,500 for the Box of Love drive, an all-time record for this annual event! In addition, the School was able to give the organization, For Families of Active Military, a check for $1,200 which was used to purchase turkeys completing each box for a Thanksgiving dinner. Taylor is also the President and Founder of the Portraits of Courage club at La Salle. To contact Taylor and learn more about these clubs you can go to supportourtroopsclub@gmail.com. FALL 2014
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