Summer break is a time for rest and relaxation, but some theater students chose to attend workshops and develop various skills this summer.

“Internationals is a week long thespian festival where you go to workshops to improve your theater skills, go see shows that schools have brought from across the country, and meet a ton of new people. It’s a crazy exciting learning experience that they somehow manage to fit into a week out in Lincoln, Nebraska,” Eve Mendoza (11) said.

Mendoza, Brian Bandura (’12), Mia Gjeldum (11), and Zachary Buntin (11) are students who attended the international thespian festival.

“I went for a few reasons. One, I had friends who were going. Two, [this festival] was one of the biggest theater things one could attend, and [it was said to be] a must go. Three, this was the cliché reason of I love theater. The fest was the biggest and baddest thing I could attend [nationally] which could benefit me in the career I want to go into,” Buntin said.

The students had attended a regional conference in January, but it differed from the weeklong festival.

“At the regional conference, I felt I could meet everyone in an hour. At internationals, I feel like I couldn’t ever do that. There were close to 3,000 people there,” Buntin said.