Practicing hundreds of hours and traveling many miles just to win the golden prize in their eyes, paid off. Jacob Daughtery and Cameron Duvall practiced for days to perfect their performance to be ready for the Trumbauer competition. Trumbauer is a state competition for theatre performances held at Troy University. Daughtery and Duvall partners in the Duet Novice category and took and unexpected first place.
“I was excited that we won, because getting first in the whole state is a big accomplishment especially being a novice,” Duvall said.
There are two groups, novice and varsity. A novice is a competitor that has never competed in Trumbauer before, and a varsity is a competitor that has competed in Trumbauer. So for novices Daughtery and Duvall were very excited to hear that they won first place in the state as a duet of the confrontation scene from Les Misérables.
“I’m the most proud of me and Cameron’s piece because when we started it was really bad and coming as far as winning first place in a state competition makes me really proud of the both of us,” Daughtery said.
On top of their big duet performance Daughtery and Duvall also entered the Solo Novice category. Daughtery won third place with his piece Santa Fe from Newsies and Duvall took fourth place with his performance of Corner of the Sky from Pitman. Duvall is proudest of his solo piece because his total score went up seven points from his district performance. In district you need at least a 40 to go on to compete in Trumbauer and Duvall slide by with a perfect 40. In Trumbauer Duvall scored a 47 out of 50 total points, Duvall couldn’t have done it without practice.
“I was always practicing. If I thought I was practicing too much I would practice more because you can never be too good,” Duvall said.
As first time competitors nerves started to get to the actors. On the first morning right before they had to perform Duvall was sitting on the bus having a panic attack because he was so afraid of his first time performance in front of more than 2,000 people. Daughtery and Duvall both said the cause of the nerves was just the pressure to do the best that they could because of all the people that were watching them plus it was only their first competition.
“My nerves were especially getting to me after I performed both my pieces and saw everyone else’s performance and saw how good theirs was. I started to feel self-conscious about my performance and I started thinking of what I could’ve done better,” Daughtery said.
Even though they both won big titles in their categories, the trip to Troy University in all was what made the experience once in a life time. Daughtery’s favorite part about the trip was seeing all the different talent that went through the competition, it gave him new ideas and things he needs to work on for next year’s Trumbauer. Duvall’s most memorable part of the trip was the bus ride home, where the theatre group all sang the songs they performed in the competition.
“After getting our award and being around all the people that came to see us, we are all just having a good time and singing expressed how we were feeling,” Duvall said.
Both Daughtery and Duvall want to pursue acting through college. Daughtery is even preparing for auditions for the Cinderella play coming soon. Duvall is eager to do more acting to. What pushes him to want more and to do better is the people that surrounds him when he acts. Because of Trumbauer both Daughtrey’s and Duvall’s love for acting has grew greater.
“It was an amazing experience because there were over 2,000 people there competing and to see all the talent and it makes you think what you could do differently to make yourself a better actor,” Daughtrey said.