At 7:00 pm on April 4th, Athens Academy hosted its annual Luminaria showcase to celebrate the arts in the upper school. However, several things were much different this year which helped the event be successful.
Years ago, Athens Academy hosted highschool talent shows which gathered a small crowd and contained music, jokes, odd skills, and other things people deemed talents. Unfortunately, due to Covid-19, the talent shows were suspended and due to a lack of support were never immediately revived. For the first time since then, the talent show was brought back.
This year, Luminaria combined the usual band, orchestra, and literary performances with independent performances that the high school could sign up for. While not called a talent show anymore, everyone was welcome to perform, and many did. On top of that, Luminaria was hosted outside at Wire Park, which is a brand new and aesthetic venue.
Matt Can, a senior at ACAD, performed two guitar solos and said, “Overall, Luminaria was a great time. It was definitely kind of cold so that was a new challenge for me when playing, but I think I managed to push through, and everyone seemed to like ‘Just The Two of Us’ and ‘Isn’t She Lovely’.” Like Matt pointed out, the weather that day was actually pretty windy and cold, yet the crowd lucked out as the weather improved a bit.
Furthermore, friends of performers, family, and other students seemed to enjoy the mixture of fine arts presented. Junior Luke De La Fuente said, “It was really awesome to see friends and classmates be able to express their talents and art. It was definitely a ‘you had to be there’ type of event.”
Since Wire Park has several restaurants, many students took the opportunity to meet up for dinner, watch the performances, and casually hang out. It ended up being a nice atmosphere with the new location!
In the following years, if Luminaria is hosted the way it was this year, I know it will grow in popularity and attract more viewers and performers. Simply by combining the usual event with the old talent show, Luminaria was able to draw in a wider variety of performers. With art, poems, dance, singing, and music, it made for a relaxing Thursday night!
