KCACTF - Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival

     As I have mentioned before, Holy Days, the play that Marquette University is producing as we speak, has completely been designed by students. This aspect of our production makes these performances extremely unique. The scenic design team consists of: Lex Gernon, Raquel Garces, and myself (Carissa Saia), the costume design team consists of: Adriana Saia, Andrea Schoening, and Maddy Yee, the light design was designed by Nic Trapani, and the sound design was designed by Jack Tarnow. It has been an amazing experience.
    America has a festival every year called, KCACTF or The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. The festival recognizes actors, designers, technicians, stage managers, and directors. There are many events, awards, and performances that take place at this festival. Every year, Marquette University’s Theatre Department enters a show to compete at the theatre festival. This year, Holy Days was the play that our department decided to sign up for the competition. Because of the uniqueness of this play, we think that we have a great chance of taking our performance on the road.
     What happens when a school chooses one of their shows to present to KCACTF, is that two representatives of the festival’s board comes to the performance, gives the actors, director, and designers feedback, and judges the performance. The festival is split up into regions and the festivals are done by those regions. The judges from each region get together at the beginning of December and they choose so many schools to go on to perform at the festival. This weekend, Sunday, two representatives of our region came to see Holy Days. The design teams took them out to eat before the matinee to get to know them and to explain to them why our production is so unique. It was a great opportunity to talk to people who love theatre and have been doing it for so many years.
     After lunch, they went to see the show and I think that they were very impressed. They gave us constructive criticism and told us what they liked and didn’t like about all aspects of the performance. We all have high hopes for our show to go on to the festival. We are very proud of our production and we want to share that with KCACTF.