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Jeff Walker One -Act Festival

2024 Jeff Walker Festival Award Recipients
Keep in mind that every young person who participated in this festival is a WINNER!

Thank you to the actors, writers, directors, lighting and sound crew, stage crew, adjudicators, volunteers and attendees at the 2024 Jeff Walker Youth One-Act Festival yesterday. We want to give a HUGE ROUND OF APPLAUSE TO OUR AWARD WINNERS!
OUTSTANDING ACTRESS DRAMA
Teagan Dillard in Shooting Stars
OUTSTANDING ACTRESS COMEDY
Liz Guerrero in The Meet Cute
OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Aniya Hollis in Awake
OUTSTANDING ACTOR
Anthony Gentile in The Meet Cute
OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR
Shane Teal in Happily Ever After
OUTSTANDING EMERGING ACTRESS
Olivia Kubacki in Happily Ever After
OUTSTANDING BREAKOUT ACTRESS
Gabby Scheffler in Shooting Stars
OUTSTANDING EMERGING ACTOR
Noah Tal in Happily Ever After
OUTSTANDING SCRIPT
The Meet Cute, written by Lola Fenning
OUTSTANDING COMEDIC TIMING
Nathaniel Christopher in Star Trip 1
OUTSTANDING CHARACTER ACTRESS
Lily Falkenburg in Star Trip 1
OUTSTANDING ENSEMBLE
The cast of Shooting Stars
OUTSTANDING DUO
Shane Callahan & Connor Clay in A Candle in Time
OUTSTANDING DIRECTING
Lexie Rubincan / Shooting Stars
OUTSTANDING MONOLOGUE
Wren Roze Shweiki in Shooting Stars
SPLIT PERSONALITY AWARD
Ezra Tal in Happily Ever After
DOUBLE DUTY
Caolan Piccolomini for his roles in both Happily Ever After and A Candle in Time
OUTSTANDING COMING OF AGE DRAMA
Awake, written and directed by Lucas Zapata-McHugh
OUTSTANDING TEAM PLAYER
Erin Moist for learning her role in Star Trip 1 in three days
OUTSTANDING TIME TRAVEL
Ivy Jackson in A Candle in Time
OUTSTANDING MOMENT
Micah Davenport in Awake
OUTSTANDING PRODUCTION BY A FIRST TIME DIRECTOR
A Candle in Time, writer/director London Black
OUTSTANDING OVERALL PRODUCTION
The Meet Cute, writer/director by Lola Fenning
About the Jeff Walker Youth One Act Festival
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In the early days of the Drama League’s Children’s Wing, now known as the Chrysalis Players, a young talent named Jeff Walker was one of the shining stars. Not only was he extraordinarily gifted onstage, but he was also incredibly charismatic and lit up the building with his broad smile and infectious personality.

For several years, he was a welcome fixture in the cast of nearly every Children’s Wing show. This included being cast as Benvolio in the Wilmington Drama League’s 1995 production of Romeo & Juliet. On April 27, the Thursday between performance weekends, Jeff was tragically killed in a car accident near his home at the age of seventeen. The show proceeded through closing weekend with the director reading his lines from the script.

In the months that followed, he was posthumously presented with the Bob Evans Award for exemplary youth in theatre. And the regional youth one act festival in Pennsylvania, in which he had won the first-ever award for Best Actor, was renamed in his honor. The Wilmington Drama League has since become the host for that annual event and it retains his name.

Many of the young people in this festival were not even born the day that we lost Jeff, but they are touched by everything he contributed to help grow the Chrysalis Players to what it is today. We dedicate this festival to Jeff.
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