This Year's ACTF

It is that time of year again. Yes, the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival: Region III was about a week ago and here I am to tell you about my wonderful experience. As always, ACTF provides a great opportunity to expand your skills within theatre through attending workshops, seeing plays, and showcasing your talent whether that be as a performer or a designer. This year's crop of shows was a lot of fun. As always, there's at least one show that simply does not impress. Of course, there are also plenty of amazing shows that make up for that one bad play. The shows I got to see this year include: Rent; The Beaux Stratagem; Risata, Sciocco . . . Risata!; Gone Missing; Master Harald . . . and the Boys; and The Circus in Winter. What a great variety of shows to see! I think I both laughed out loud and shed a tear during each one of these shows.

The show I appreciated the least was Rent. I think the biggest problem the show had was its staging. There were some really odd blocking choices that muddled the storytelling. Their use of their amazing set was also somewhat confusing. It was sometimes hard to tell which space the stage was suppose to represent because they didn't keep the entrances/use of space consistent. There were also video projections in the background which worked some of the time during the show but I don't think they should have been running when they weren't the primary focus. All that said, you've got to remember that this show is being performed in a completely different space than where it was meant to be performed and it is often difficult to transfer everything without a hitch. Still, Rent was not all I thought it was going to be.

My favorite show of this year's ACTF was the student written The Circus in Winter. Students from Ball State University collaborated to write this adaption of the Cathy Day novel of the same name. It tells the story of a simple Indiana stable-owner during the late nineteenth century and his experiences in attempting to bring a dying circus back to life. The show was visually stunning and musically incredible.

The magnificent set design depicted the interior of a round barn. The stairways moved to help suggest the different places the characters found themselves in. The costumes were colorful, exciting, and realistic. What was the most impressive about the show, however, was a life size elephant puppet! The design, construction, and puppeteering of the elephant took my breath away. You didn't have to imagine much as the elephant boomed onto the stage! What I appreciated most about this show was its unique use of folk music. Being one of my favorite genres of music, this instantly caused me to fall in love with the show as soon as they started strumming that guitar and picking that mandolin.

ACTF is always an eye-opening, talent stretching experience and this year was no different. So much theatre packed into one week is both exhausting and filled with pleasures. I greatly regret that this is the last ACTF I will attend as a student. I will miss the amazing shows, the great workshops, the beautiful design projects, and, of course, the fascinating people you meet who have just as much a passion for theatre as you do. So long, ACTF. You will be missed.