DONUTS!!!… Now that I have your attention, let’s talk about Destination Imagination (DI). No, Destination Imagination isn’t the place your mind wanders to when your pre-calculus teacher starts to lecture on inverse cosines, but a competition in which student-led teams compete with and against other student led teams from around the globe in one of five challenge areas. These challenge areas range from improv challenges to scientific challenges and everything in between.

DI begins at home. Each team (which, again, are student run) begins each season by selecting their challenge area. There are five challenge areas in total, including Technical, Scientific, Structural, Fine Arts, and Improv. Once the team picks a challenge they must create a theatrical presentation that incorporates their challenge’s specifics. But don’t worry; you don’t need to be an actor to enjoy DI. In fact, since every year each challenge has a different theme that the teams must adhere to in their presentation and some challenges emphasize the performance more than others, anyone can have fun and play an integral part in their team.

Each team then constructs a set, costumes, and anything else their challenge asks for (except for improv, which has no set or costumes).However the teams have to be careful, as anything they build needs to be compact enough to move to and from competitions. There are three levels of competition, regional, state, and global, in which teams compete against everyone in their age group who chose the same challenge as them. The competition comes to a head with global finals, where in competing teams travel to Knoxville to compete against hundreds of teams from all around the globe. Each team’s presentation ends up being utterly unique, and a Bob Jones team even had a sentient donut in it, hence the opening line.

DI is a fantastic after school activity and you can sign up right now. More information can be found on the official Destination Imagination website at http://www.idodi.org/ . You can also contact Mrs. Dauma, the Bob Jones DI sponsor for more information and to learn how to sign up.