Black Box Awards, 7th observation.

The Black Box Awards.

Every year since its inception, the Nova theater department has had an awards ceremony called the Black box awards.
This ceremony is a night where the theater department gets together and passes a few different types of awards to the students in the program. Best Actor, Best Actress, Freshman awards are just a few of the distinctions passed out on that night. There are also Paper Plate awards that are more creative. the students have a choice of paying a dollar per paper plate and draw their own award to display for someone else in a designated spot at the Black box.
There is a committee that decides all the entertainment that will be performed over the course of the evening. They also decide other things such as catering, and how much the tickets will cost for the participants. Lauren Butler, a senior psychology and theater major who will be attending the graduate school at UCF is the committee head, her co-chair, Jon Sanz is a theater soon to be musical theater major at Nova.
The teachers and faculty of the department nominate and eventually decide the winners of each award. This is a special night to be recognized in the department for the good work that has been done in the year.

A few possible nominees could be Lauren Butler for her performance in The Importance of Being Earnest, Alex Glamyan for his role in The Importance of Being Earnest, Nora Yessayan in Stop Kiss.
The ceremony takes place on the first floor of the Performance and Visual Arts building in the Black Box theater.

Grant Auditions

Observations



Every year there are auditions available for the students to have a chance of getting into productions. But there are another type of auditions that give the students a chance to earn up to 3000 dollars in scholarship money.
The audition dates span over a couple months and each student has a choice of when the would like to perform for a few faculty in the area they are majoring or wish to major in. During the auditions themselves the students have to present something that goes with their major such as two contrasting monologues for acting or a dance solo for the dance majors.
After the performance the student is then interviewed by the faculty members who want to find out if they are worth the money being given to them.
The process the acting students generally go through to get ready for the auditions are as follows-
Signing up for a date on the Nova website
finding two monologues of a contrasting nature that best represent themselves as an actor.
Practicing the pieces and even selecting a third monologue in case the faculty asks for another.
Getting a good nights sleep before the audition date.
The performance.

These auditions are a great opportunity for the theater students, giving them a chance to practice the all important audition that every aspiring actor has to go through.