Following last year’s backstage mess, Benson’s Got Talent! returned to Benson’s auditorium on March 6th with smashing success, with 17 acts performing to draw in all manner of students and adults alike. New this year were awards given out by judges and the audience. Winning the Audience Choice Award, Marvin Kolbow performed Sweet Transvestite. “I just love the amount of passion and confidence that goes into theater and stuff like that,” Kolbow said. Messiah Shaw, performing L’amour De Ma Vie, took home the First Place Award. “There’s a lot of people that did, like, really good, and so I wasn’t sure what to expect,” said Shaw.

The amount of effort and resources required to run a talent show is immense. Heidi Sprecher, lead advisor of BATS, said “It takes a lot of different teams planning things.” Sprecher also stated that this year’s Talent Show has been in the works since September 2025. Jacob Patterson, a teacher at Benson who assists with BATS, said, “It takes a tremendous amount of work, and a lot of time and a lot of effort from our students.”

The Talent Show has repeatedly changed hands throughout its history — from just being a part of Tech Show to being a BATS-organized event with its own dedicated day — it’s quite impressive that Benson’s Got Talent! has remained a piece of Benson’s history for so long. During the recent pandemic, Talent Show efforts ground to a halt, forcing the event to stop for the time being. During renovations at the Marshall Campus, however, Benson’s Got Talent! was revived as an independent entity, separate from Tech Show and acting as its own performance.

Zahra Faruqui, emcee of this and last year’s Talent Show and BATS co-president, said that “last year, there was a million little things that went wrong, in a million little places,” and that “we had some issues with communication — we’d never had a full rehearsal of the show.” Following the show, BATS had a meeting to create a plan for better communication and organization, in an effort to ensure that future performances would go swimmingly.

The success of this year’s showing of Benson’s Got Talent! gives hope for the future of BATS affairs, including this year’s upcoming Tech Show, further reinforcing that BATS has the skills and dedication to put on incredible performances, shows, and other events, right here at Benson Tech.

Disclosure: Zahra Faruqui, interviewed for this article, is an editor of The Benson Orbit but was not involved in editing this story.