From May 25-28 students all over the world will compete at Iowa State University at Odyssey of the Mind.

Odyssey of the Mind (OM) is a theatre competition where students from different schools are broken up into teams and solve some sort of problem. One of the three of our teams advanced to the world competition.

Team 2, who placed second at the state competition and advanced to worlds, is made up of juniors Ben Allen, Bradley Salyer and Alexis Tetreault and seniors Kira Henkel, Arianne Wilson, Regan Barbour and Kevin Lilley.

At OM, team 2 had to create a set and costumes with $145. Their task was titled Something Fishy, where they had to create three different ways to catch things with a character portraying a fisherman.

“Basically, we had to make three catches with three fishing methods and we had to have a fishing character on the dock, and we had to have a humorous character that was like a fish,” Tetreault said. “We had to do it in under eight minutes and we had to make the fishing, like the objects for fishing, we had to make those move.”

Judges praised the group’s performance and their creativity. Salyer said they thought the costumes were “pretty neat.”

Team 5, who placed third at the state competition, is made up of juniors Bri Stewart, Hallie Barnes and Richard Browne and seniors Kenzie Weeks, Kian Fonicello, Julia Foster and Rachel Bohannon.

Only the top two teams at states qualify for worlds.

Their problem, titled Furs, Fins, Feathers & Friends, required the team to create a humorous depiction of problem solving through the perspective of three different animals using song and dance as well as using a multitude of emotions. Team 5 had to create their set and costumes with $125.

“We had to solve the issue of pollution, like all of our problems were related to pollution. We had to go through a door… there was really no point to the door,” Stewart said.

Team 3, who placed third at the regionals competition, is made up of junior RJ Wright and seniors Kali Bumpass, Lauren Butler, Samantha Schwab and Arianne Wilson.

With $125, team 3’s problem Aesop Gone Viral had them create and present an Aesop fable gone “viral.” They had to set it in a past time period and have Aesop’s fables and morals spread throughout a community.

“I gained experience that would better me in the theater department,” Butler said.

Salyer expressed his desire to improve the set pieces before the next stage of competition, adding that the team currently wants to burn everything after it broke during the state competition.

Last year, the Odyssey of the Mind team won the spontaneous portion at worlds, so they will be defending our title at this year’s competition.

The department has been trying to raise money to allow them to attend the world competition next month.

The Drama department has a Go Fund Me page to raise money to get them to worlds: https://www.gofundme.com/wfhsgoestoworlds .