The International Thespian Festival is a week at Indiana University Bloomington in late June: dorm housing, ten thousand steps a day across campus, Thespy performances in the morning and workshops until night. State festivals are the weekend version. Either way, your kid is packing for a trip where you won’t be there to fix anything.
Pack together the weekend before. They carry it, they live out of it, so they need to know where everything is.
The list
- Sheet music in the performance key, hole-punched in a binder, cuts clearly marked for the accompanist
- A second copy of the music, because binders walk off
- Monologue binder with every piece, even the alternates
- Headshots and resumes, 10 to 15 copies, if college auditions are on the schedule
- Blacks for crew calls: black shirt, black pants, closed-toe black shoes
- Character shoes, plus dance wear for movement workshops and dance calls
- Twin XL sheets or a sleeping bag, pillow, and a blanket
- Towels and shower shoes
- A small fan
- Laundry money and a half-size bottle of detergent
- Throat care kit: lozenges, honey packets, tea bags, and a big water bottle
- Comfortable walking shoes and a light layer for over-air-conditioned theaters
- Phone charger and a portable battery
- Lanyard or badge holder; the festival badge opens every door all week
- Cash plus a card, split between wallet and bag
- A printed page with chaperone numbers, the dorm address, and home numbers
- Snacks for the dorm, because dining halls close earlier than teenagers get hungry
- Something quiet for downtime: cards, a book, headphones
The items that earn their spot
The sheet music, in the right key. Festival accompanists sight-read hundreds of cuts a day and they play what’s on the page. Music in the wrong key, loose pages, or a phone screen instead of paper costs your kid their best sixteen bars. Binder, hole-punched, marked. This is the single most-forgotten item at every festival, and the one with no fix on site.
Headshots and resumes. ITF runs college auditions in front of dozens of programs at once. A kid who performs well and has nothing to hand the table behind it just performed a commercial with no phone number at the end. Print them before the trip; campus printing during festival week is a line that eats a workshop.
The blacks. Tech kids know. Performer kids find out at the first crew call that black-ish doesn’t count. One full set of real blacks takes no suitcase space and saves a frantic group-chat search of other people’s luggage.
The fan and the shower shoes. June in Indiana is hot, dorm climate control is a rumor on some floors, and a communal shower without sandals is a foot problem your kid brings home as a souvenir. The two cheapest items on the list buy the most comfort per dollar.
The throat care kit. A week of performing, cheering at the opening ceremony, and talking until 11pm takes voices down by Wednesday. Lozenges, honey, tea, water. Singers guard the instrument; everyone else learns to.
The phone-and-money plan, on paper. Agree before the trip: one check-in text a day at a set time, what the cash is for, what the card is for, who they call first if something goes wrong (chaperone, then you). Phones die at festivals daily, which is what the printed numbers page is for.
The night-before rule from the cheer competition list holds here too: bag packed and zipped before bed, music binder checked page by page. And if this trip follows a production week, the tech week survival read covers the seven days before it. Gear basics for the whole theater year live in the theater gear guide.