CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) — DMR Adventures of Charlottesville and Studio Wayne of Waynesboro were among 141 junior theater groups from 31 states and Washington D.C. as well as seven foreign countries gathered at the Cobb Convention Center in Atlanta for the Junior Theater Festival in Atlanta earlier this month.

In the end, the two groups from Central Virginia each walked away with an Excellence in Ensemble award and two performers from each named as JTF All-Stars.

“It’s like Disneyland for theater kids,” DMR Adventures member and senior Macy Stancil told Cville Right Now. “You get to meet so many amazing people and you learn so much.”

Studio Wayne is the education wing of the Wayne Theater, while DMR Adventures is a performing arts academy located in Charlottesville.

The competition at JTF consists of each group performing a 15-minute cutting of a selection of junior musicals owned by Music Theatre International, one of the competition’s main sponsors. Teams are allowed to pick which songs they’ll include in their allotted 15 minutes, but if they go over, they’re disqualified.

“We’re trying to fit as much as we can in knowing that there’s going to be some moments for applause and we need to keep some scenes because you have to like have at least enough of a narrative that the cutting makes sense,” Wayne Theater Director of Education Corey Holmes told Cville Right Now, “which is like a super fun creative problem solving opportunity to have.”

This year, Studio Wayne was the only group to perform “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang JR.,” while DMR performed “Guys and Dolls JR.”

Preparation for the festival begins in August, with students and staff from both groups saying their practices revved up the closer they got to the event in mid-January. However, despite the event’s competitive nature, the students said they enjoyed the camaraderie the event brings.

Stancil said she loves being able to watch other groups, most of whom are not from Virginia.

“There’s a couple of kids that my friends and I will talk to every year,” she said, “so it’s kind of cool to have these random friends from all over the country that you all kind of share this thing and you all come to this event every year.”

JTF also provides students with the chance to bond with their own troupes, with each group staying together in Atlanta for the event. DMR member and freshman June Jones said the group always arrived a day early, making pitstops at the Barnes & Noble and Cheesecake Factory near their hotel

For Studio Wayne member and senior Daniel Cole, the experience of traveling with his troupe held him form a tight bond with his fellow members.

“I feel like that troupe is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a cast,”  he told Cville Right Now, “and that’s saying something, because I’ve worked with a lot of casts.”

For both Studio Wayne and DMR, the event culminated in a number of awards for their hard work. In addition to the excellence in ensemble awards, two performers from each trope were named JTF All-Stars — Dodger Holmes and Maddox Knorr from Studio Wayne, as well as Priyanka Krishnaraj and Jones from DMR.

“Not everybody gets an award every year,” Jones said of DMR’s awards, “so it felt really good to get one.”

Fellow DMR member and junior Jackson Van Santvoord also said receiving the Excellence in Ensemble award felt great, and while doing show in Charlottesville is rewarding enough on its own, receiving recognition from JTF felt different.

“It’s something else very special to be recognized by an outside organization or outside people who are professionals,” he said. “What we’re doing is really paying off on that level.”