On Friday morning, the South Dakota High School Activities Association board of directors discussed a recommendation from their speech advisory committee, requesting that the 2021 state one-act play festival, scheduled for early February, become a virtual event. A motion to grant this request, however, was denied, meaning the state festival will move forward with a plan to hold live, in-person performances.
Back on November 4th, the board approved a recommendation from the COVID task force, which gave the green light to all winter sports and activities to proceed as scheduled. This included the state one-act play festival to be live, in-person, with virtual being the backup plan.
“Ove the past month, the Speech Advisory Committee has met several times. They met Wednesday evening this week with the recommendation to our board that we cancel the live portion and hold it virtually,” explained SDHSAA Executive Director Dan Swartos. “Our board heard that request, there was a motion to [go virtual], and that motion failed two ayes and four nays, so that basically leaves our one-act play in the position they were in prior to today, which is a live, in-person event in early February.”
The state one-act play festival was scheduled to take place February 4-6 at Brandon Valley high school. However, with live performances being the plan, the three classes will split up to three locations around the state. Class AA schools will perform in Brandon, Class A at Rapid City Central, and Class B on the stage of the Performing Arts Center at South Dakota State University in Brookings.
Instead of the event being three days long, and because it’ll be divided among three separate communities, the 2021 state one-act play festival will now only be a two-day event, instead of three, scheduled for Friday February 5th and Saturday February 6th. Attendance procedures for the event are still being finalized with policies expected to vary from venue to venue.
The event could still transition to a virtual format within the next month and a half, but as it sits right now - schools should prepare for live performances in front of judges on February 5 and 6.
