The International Thespian Society (ITS) is an honor society for high school and middle school theatre students. It is a division of the Educational Theatre Association. Thespian troupes serve students in grades 9–12; Junior Thespian troupes serve students in grades 6 through 8. A few famous ITS alumni include Tom Hanks, Val Kilmer, James Marsters, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Stephen Schwartz. Festivals are held annually at the state and national levels. Each June the organization holds the International Thespian Festival. For 25 years it was held at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. As of 2019 it is being held at Indiana University-Bloomington where the first ITF was held in 1941. Membership currently stands at approximately 139,000 student members across 5,000 schools. The one millionth Thespian was inducted in 1976 and the two millionth Thespian was inducted in 2009. As of 2019, there have been over 2.4 million Thespians inducted. History The International Thespian Society was founded in 1929 in Fairmont, West Virginia. Originally named National Thespians, the society was founded by Dr. Paul Opp, Earnest Bavely and Harry T. Leeper. National Thespians was an honorary organization for high school theater students who earned membership through participation in their schools' theatre programs. The organization consisted of troupes, each linked to a school. The first troupe was formed by Dr. Earl Blank at Natrona County High School in Casper, Wyoming. At the end of the 1928–1929 school year there were 71 troupes across 26 states. In October, 1929, the first issue of The High School Thespian, "official organ of National Thespians" was published. The National Thespian headquarters was moved to Cincinnati during the year 1935. That same year, the society was renamed The National Thespian Dramatic Honor Society. The society held its first National High School Drama Conference and Play Production Festival in 1941 at Indiana University, which later became a bi-annual event. The High School Thespian became Dramatics in 1944. In October 1945, The National Thespian Dramatic Honor Society was again renamed the National Thespian Society. As the Thespian Society reached its 25th anniversary in 1954, 1,432 Thespian troupes existed across forty-eight states and the then-territories of Alaska, Hawaii, and the Canal Zone, as well as Canada and Japan. In 1969 the organization's name was changed to the title it still holds today: The International Thespian Society. June 1982 marked a name change for the National High School Drama Conference and Play Production