This week, 26 Chapman University theatre majors will attend the
Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival
’s (KCACTF) regional competition in St. George, Utah. The festival, which runs February 10-14 at Dixie State University, features competitions in playwriting, devised theatre and acting, along with scholarship and awards programs. In addition, festival participants have the opportunity to attend workshops and symposia covering a range of topics including playwriting, auditioning, voice, movement, stage combat, theater for children, scene painting, and scenery construction. Chapman University is a member of the
KCACTF Region VIII
, which includes Arizona, Central and Southern California, Southern Nevada, Hawaii and Utah.

For the playwriting category, six 10-minute works are chosen each year from member schools to compete regionally; this year, three out of the six works were written by Chapman students! According to Chapman’s Department of Theatre chair Nina LeNoir, the three students chosen for the playwriting competition are Bettina Mueller-Teuscher ’15, Audrey Thayer ’15, and Alison Weiss ’15. Each will work with a director, dramaturg, and actors to develop a staged reading of the play, followed by a response session with guest respondents during the festival.

The devised theatre competition involves works that have been created, usually through initial improvisation, by a group of performers. Eighteen Chapman theatre majors worked over the January 2015 interterm in a class that created a devised theatre piece which will be presented, and theatre student Leean Gill ’15 will be presenting a solo devised piece,
Hazalahah and the Magic Trunk
.

Actors performing in costume.


Cristian Guerrero ’15 in Chapman’s 2013-14 production of “A Night of Noh Theatre.”



In the acting competition category, Chapman’s Cristian Guerrero ’15 was nominated for the festival’s Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship competition for his outstanding performance in
A Night of Noh Theatre
, which was performed by the Theatre department during the 2013-14 school year. Guerrero will be partnered in the competition by Tosh Turner ’17.

According to KCACTF, two finalists will be selected from the playwriting competition in each region. From those 16 finalists, a judging panel will choose one award recipient play along with three finalists to invite to the national festival in April at the famed John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Those four plays will again be presented as staged readings in the Kennedy Center Theatre Lab with casts comprised of professional actors from the Washington, D.C. area. Each of the 16 regional finalist plays may be published by Dramatic Publishing Company, and the first-place award recipient will also receive a $500 cash prize.

KCACTF is a national theater program welcoming 20,000 students from more than 700 colleges and universities into its nationwide competitions annually. The organization has served since 1969 as a catalyst for improving the quality of college theatre in the United States.