Remembering their over-practiced, memorized material, students across the United States all feel their hearts pound rapidly together for the sake of their dreams in performing arts.

The 47th Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival is hosting 1,700 people from region five on Jan. 18-24 in Minneapolis, Minn.

The United States is split up into eight regions for the festival. Region five includes Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.

The festival is for students interested in performing arts. There are workshops for students to learn how to improve their skills, perform in an acting competition, design tech intensives and make connections with professional companies and graduate schools, among other activities to participate in.

In order to attend the festival, students must be asked to attend or be approved to attend.

“Every production that we do, someone comes from KCACTF to respond to it,” said Jane Cox, director and professor of music and theatre. “Then, that respondent picks who he or she thinks is the best actor from it, that person gets an opportunity, if they choose to … go to the regional festival and be in an acting competition there.”

The respondent does not only observe the actors while attending a play. If a respondent likes what they see, they invite whoever’s role they liked best: actor, stage manager, costume designer or tech people to attend the festival.

“The person who comes in and sees the production can say, for example, the stage manager did a good job, so there’s opportunities for stage managers and design and tech people to be given certificates for their work,” Cox said.

It is seen as an honor if a student is invited to perform at the festival, and from a student’s perspective, it is a learning opportunity that can also be very stressful.

“It’s not really laid back, I’d say, because it’s very professional,” said Christopher Priebe, senior in performing arts, with an emphasis in acting and directing. “You’re being judged on the work that you provide constantly.”

This will be Priebe’s third year performing at the festival. He was chosen by a KCACTF respondent because of his performance in, “Amadeus,” where he connected with Alyssa Maldonado, senior in performing arts, so well that he chose her to be his partner in one of his scenes for the audition.

Priebe is one of the 46 people from Iowa State attending. Students as well as faculty from the college attend the festival. Brad Dell, assistant professor of music and theater at Iowa State, is the vice chair of region five and is in charge of scheduling the entire festival.

“The acting competition is the earliest thing in the competition,” Cox said. “Towards the end of the week is when they will choose who goes to the national competition is Washington D.C.”

Kelly Bartlett has been the only Iowa State student who has won the competition and gone to nationals in Washington D.C. in 2001.

The acting competition starts with Irene Ryan scenes that last three minutes. If the actor makes it successfully through those scenes, they perform a scene they came prepared with that lasts two minutes. After that, if approved, the actor performs a minute-long monologue.

“You just do boom, boom, boom because you only have six minutes do to that [acting competition],” said Priebe. “They’re very strict on the time.”

Besides the acting competition, there are professional companies there to hire.

“They also have professional auditions that you can apply for where it’s kind of like a cattle call idea where all of these schools, are looking for summer interns or just different things for their Summer Stock Festival; they need actors, they need people, so you are given 90 seconds in that portion to do a song and a monologue,” Priebe said. “You can do two monologues, you can do three monologues if you wanted, just as long as you hit that 90 second mark.”

This will be Priebe’s first year auditioning for the professional auditions where he is hoping to fulfill his requirement by Iowa State’s performing arts department of an out of state internship. He has already met his requirement for an in state internship at ACTORS in Ames.

“It’s so completely convenient because you don’t have to go to all these different places to audition,” Priebe said. “If they like you, because they’re all in the same room watching you, you just go in, 90 seconds. If one of them likes you, they’ll call you and then you get called back for a callback in which they tell you specifically what they want you to do,” Priebe said.

They give students a night to prepare their future.

“That last night, you watch the 18 people in the acting competitions,” Cox said. “Then there are a group of professional actors, most of them are actors, and they are going to pick the one that is picked to go to the nationals.”

For students who are not actors, there are design events to take part in.

“[The students] submit their design work and then there’s a design expo where you can show the renderings,” Cox said. “Costumes from certain productions from colleges and universities in the region that were thought to be really outstanding are shown and then they come out and see what other universities are doing.”

The costume parade occurs the same night while the judges are choosing who is going to be the winner of the acting competition.

It is a competitive festival that leads to unending nerves, but is an honorable experience.

The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival is hosted by Normandale Community College in Minnesota, with support from Southwest Minnesota State University, North Hennepin Community College, the city of Burnsville and the Guthrie Theater.