Dreher drama students perform in national competition

By Temple Ligon

Last June four of Dreher High School’s finest flew to Omaha and from there they took the bus to Lincoln and the University of Nebraska, home of the Educational Theater Association International Festival, held annually for the past 50 years. The four Dreher students – Alexandra Dubose, Taylor Goodwin, Wesley Mousseau, Aidan Toumey – were led by their drama teacher Jeanette Arvay Beck.

Beck’s students Dubose and Goodwin performed at Columbia City Council this past Tuesday. They sang Don’t Rain on My Parade from Cole Porter’s Anything Goes.

Also attending at the University of Nebraska were 4,000 other high school students – actors, technicians, and filmmakers – from across the country.  The Dreher four spent the week auditioning, competing, and workshopping. Out of a perfect score of 300, Xan Dubose and Taylor Goodwin scored a 295 with their duet from the Broadway musical Rent, an updated and drastically altered version of Puccini’s opera La Boheme.

Aidan Toumey’s state award-winning film The Balloon placed 5^th nationally.

Xan Dubose’s and Wesley Mousseau’s auditions to 53 universities garnered a total of 22 callbacks including the University of Indiana for Dubose and the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis for Mousseau.