Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, Region 4: Daytona State College (January 31 - February 4, 2012)

So this week was a pure blast! I landed in Daytona Beach, only to quickly go to dinner with KCACTF guests and professors from several universities. I bonded quickly with Geoffrey Kershner, a professor at the host school Daytona State University. We figured out we had mutual friends in common (this business is so small), and quickly talked about working together on a summer program he has in Virginia that focuses on helping Native Americans who’ve lost track of their heritage in the Appalachian Mountains.

That night, as I walked to see the evening’s invited production, I stopped at the Technical Design Presentations. I hit up a conversation with Richard Curtis, an art student from North East Community College in Tennessee, who ended up winning the Design element with his first dabble into masks for a production of OEDIPUS-33 masks cost him under $100. We talked about how artists discover new things about themselves by delving into areas they weren’t familiar with before and how we as artists can always find cost effective ways to produce our art that at times are better than the expensive route that people think must be achieved for effective story-telling.

I had a long conversation with Rebecca Hilliker, on the National Selection for KCACTF and an interviewee for the LARAMIE PROJECT. We talked about the validity of creating “out of the normal” Theatre experiences being the way for new theatre to survive. This coming from a woman that hasn’t had a TV in 30 years and is unshaped by our “modern” no-attention-span society. The next morning I did the sucessful Pilot workshop of AUDITIONING UNDER THE GAYDAR. Among the attendees were Michael Legg of Actors Theatre of Louisville and Gabrielle Norris, a journalist that interviewed me later about the sensitive subject of the class and why I thought it was important.

That night I started what looks like could be a long friendship with SETC executive director Bestsey Baun, before diving into a long conversation with playwright/actor Carl Hancock Rux and Mariann Mayberry of Steppenwolf Theatre Company about the state of commercial theatre and how the majority of new theatre takes place regionally. Our biggest concern was how the split between “commercial” and “artistic” theatre has begun across the board and even our perception of what that is as artists.

The next morning, my workshop, ARTIST AS CITIZEN, was full of people I had already met during my stay. We talked about the responsibility artists have to be active members of society and how every different member is crucially needed to make up that societal structure. Without them, it doesn’t work. Afterward we had a small powwow about further work with ASTEP, before seeing the regions Divised Works. Six schools presented some amazing pieces that ran the gambit from war, to the Heroic exploits of a Pizza Man, to our relationship with SHOES (which came from Florida International University in MIAMI and also happened to be a theme we had in our local program in Homestead, Florida).

I got to adjudicate MASTER HAROLD AND THE BOYS alongside Alliance Theatre’s Betty Hart, which hadn’t had a performance in a year before rehearsing in a garage only once leading up to Daytona. We also realized that the play thematically, on top of the issues raised through Apartide and racism, also contains the ole Art vs “Practical” application argument, which I did not expect. A sea of deep Southern dialects, the opposite of the show which was amazing to hear, then debated and discussed how the play’s strength was important for Northern Alabama society.

After a late night of celebration, I had a laughriot of a breakfast with an army of Georgia Southern University students at IHOP, where living in NY was widely discussed.

Throughout the week, it was exciting to witness the social difference in the schools and how we don’t step outside of our own comfort zone to talk about how college programs need some “out of the box” help. Really, how a little reminder to go back to your uncritical child artist self at age 4 is the way to let art just be that which it was meant to be-freeing.

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Cara Hagan, High Point University

Dani McGhee, Georgia Southern University

Ibi Olowabi, Georgia Southern University