Abby Lund, a junior in performing arts, is a team lead for a devise group along with two other devise team leaders, Andre Johnson jr. and Brittany Rebhuhn, who are going to this years region five Kennedy Center American Theatre Festival in Lincoln, NE.

 

 

Who in the Theatre department is involved in the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival?

 

Anybody is actually allowed to go to the theatre festival. Any student is allowed to attend. All they would have to do is pay the registration fee. Right now, for the events that are involved we have people doing the devised projects, people who are doing the new musical theatre, about six or eight people doing Irene Ryans, we have student who got selected to have her play directed as a stage reading at KCACTF, we have a student who got selected to be a 10 minute director, we also have a student who is taking a directing scene there and if people aren’t actually doing events at KCACTF, there are workshops all day, Monday through Friday, that people can attend as much as they want. Brad Dell is actually vice-chair of the region five advisory board for KCACTF, so he is directly involved in planning the festival and Matt Foss is the coordinator for the festival for ISU and on the festival management team

 

What are the different events that are featured at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival?

 

The different events, that I know, are the devised event, the musical theatre cabaret event, where there is about 60 to 90 people who audition and then only 20 people get picked to do a full cabaret at the end of the week. There’s Irene Ryans. Each show that we have at ISU, there are representatives there from KCACTF from other colleges that come to watch and then they select a student and the director selects a student and then that student can be nominated for an Irene Ryans. Then the student has a monologue that they take and then they choose a partner for two short scenes to KCACTF. Irene Ryans are individual awards and if you get one you can go to the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. It’s are major acting award. There are directing events, one of which is the 10-minute directing event. There’s the SDC directing event, where you send in a resume and a scene that you want to do, and then members of KCACTF will select from those who will direct and we have a student that was selected. If he gets makes it at KCACFT he can further go to the Kennedy Center. KCACTF is kind of like this middle point. There are a lot of different things you can accomplish to go to the Kennedy Center. The devise and musical theatre, they are both new this year. The musical theatre was brought up by Brad Dell

 

What is the purpose of the festival and why is it so important to theatre?

 

It is so important to theatre because we have such an amazing opportunity to meet so many people at this festival. There are so many workshops that are taught by people that we would probably never get to meet if we didn’t go to this festival. There are so many schools that go to this festival, so you get to see so many different schools and how they do theatre and how their shows are. We can go and literally get free education about what we want to do. Networking is such a huge thing in the career field of theater; it’s the biggest thing to learn how to do. When you go there you can just go to have a cup of coffee in the morning and then you get to have a conversation with somebody who’s doing a workshop, then after that workshop you can have another conversation; you just made a connection and if you go to where they work you can be like ‘hey remember me from KCACTF’ and they’ll be like ‘yeah, why don’t you come audition’ or ‘come do this’. You meet so many different types of artists. It broadens your idea of what theater is. I think, personally, that it can change many other peoples view on theater and it’s so fun. It’s fun to just go, for a week, and just take a break from school and do theater for, like, eight hours a day. The purpose is to give young artists, who are going to school, a chance to learn as much as they can before they graduate. It’s to give us a chance to learn how far we can push ourselves.

 

Where will the festival be held this year and does it move each year?

 

This year it’s in Lincoln, NE. It moves every year to a different school that’s in the region that will host the festival. The festival isn’t at the school, the school host’s by coordinating all the schedules and workshops. The last two years, ISU has hosted it. There is only one festival per year and it’s usually held the second week of school of the spring semester, so usually the third week of January.

 

What will you be performing there?

 

I am leading a devised group, and that’s the only thing I am involved in at KCACTF. There are two other devised groups that are going. Altogether there are about 20 people going that are involved in devised. I really wanted to do the musical theatre event, but it’s the same night of the devised, so I couldn’t do that; we committed to doing the devised last semester. I’m hoping to audition for a part in the 10-minute play festival, where the directors are already picked for the festival, but the casting is done at the festival. I really want to take part in as many workshops as I can because since ISU hosted it last year, we were so busy running stuff and I was working at my job, I didn’t get to go to many of the workshops.

 

Why are you involved and why would someone want to get involved in the festival?

 

I’m involved because the first year I came here I didn’t actually do a lot. I was a theatre major, but I didn’t put myself out there enough, because I was kind of new and I was like ‘I’ll just kind of sit back and see how this school is.’ I’m really going to support the devise group that I’m in. Everybody in our department has become like this family. We consider ourselves like a community, a family. Our department, the theatre department, tries to stay very close in supporting each other. We are very strong advocates, making sure that we are all taking care of each other, so the main reason I am going is to support the people who have supported me these three years that I have been here, so that I can see how much progress my fellow peers have made. I also really want to meet a lot of people who are out there and already in the business; to see how they got there, see how they worked to get where they are. Just to get some insight on what I need to prepare for when I graduate.

 

How did you prepare for this festival? How can people get involved?

 

First of all, we had to make sure we could be gone the whole week. Especially since it’s in a different state, I had to make sure I could be gone a whole week. ISU took care of the registration fee for us, but everything else was up to us to pay for, which is acceptable. We had to budget for hotel, food and gas to get there. There were a lot of personal responsibilities that I had to do to make sure that I could go. Also to prepare we have been rehearsing as much as we can, because when we get there everyone is going to be so busy doing workshops and other things. One girl who is in my devise, she is in three other projects as well. Elizabeth Thompson is in another devise; she’s in a directing scene and a playwriting scene that got chosen so she’s doing four things at once right now. So once again it’s making sure we are supporting and making sure we are prepared. Making sure that we’re putting enough care into each project even if we are not individually involved in it.