It’s the final round of the evening’s games and three teams are tied for first place: Pink Team, Blue Team and Purple Team. Sadie Briggs ‘26, Ella Rubenstein ‘27 and Johnny Traina ‘25 stand onstage representing their respective teams. Standing between them and victory is a single chair.
In the following minutes, the students will cajole and bargain with each other to leave the chair, swapping until time is called and one winning player remains sitting. Traina scores the winning points for the Purple Team and TheaterSports closes out with applause.
TheaterSports is an annual Branson tradition in which students from all acting classes compete as teams in a series of improv games. The Jan. 9 performance left audience members, participants and judges delighted.
“It was all just so playful and fun,” said English teacher Alanna Hickey. Hickey was one of three judges this year, an experience which she was new to. “I established a pretty rigorous criteria for excellence early on, which is a technique I try to use in my classes as well,” she said.
While she later reconsidered scoring harshly, Hickey found herself wanting to uphold it so she could judge every team by the same standard. This, she felt, was the reason why the crowd booed the scores.
Despite these challenges, Hickey felt the experience was positive overall and expressed joy in being able to see the acting students in an outside-of-the-classroom environment.
“I was truly impressed by the amount of talent,” she said. “There were so many students who I saw on stage for the first time, and they seemed fully alive up there.”
The actors themselves also enjoyed this lively energy. TheaterSports competitor Anna Jacobs ‘27 said she loved the event’s atmosphere: “Everyone is really engaged and wants to be there.”
While Jacobs is not taking an acting class, she took the “Improvisation as a Life Skill” immersive at the end of last school year. Acting student Sadie Briggs ‘26, who had also been in the immersive, invited Jacobs to join the Pink Team when one of their players couldn’t make it.
As with the immersive, Jacobs enjoyed TheaterSports because of its element of comedy. “I feel like I’m always laughing,” Jacobs said. “It’s honestly one of my favorite nights.”
Another competitor, Adeline Newby ‘26, expressed the same sentiments, reflecting on how she enjoyed the tradition because of how it fostered community across grades.
“The coolest thing about TheaterSports is that every single grade of acting is able to interact with one another,” she said.
Newby has participated in TheaterSports as a first-year, sophomore and now junior. This year, as an Advanced Acting student, she took on a new leadership role as a team captain. “I felt a little more pressure this year,” she said.
While the new responsibility was stressful, Newby found just as much joy in the event as previous years. This is a joy she hopes other members of the student body experience, too.
“I really hope that more people discover TheaterSports,” she said.
Newby also noted that the event could often fly under the radar. “I feel like we have smaller crowds than with FAB [the Festival of Arts at Branson] or different theater performances, but TheaterSports is one of our favorites,” she said. “I hope that next year there can be more of a showout.”
