Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, Region 8: Weber State University (February 7-11, 2012)

At the Region 8 Festival of KCACTF, I met several remarkable professors, dozens of inspiring students, led three workshops, responded to a production of a little-known Sam Shepard play, and judged the finals of the Irene Ryan Competition. Needless to say, it was a memorable experience.

I was picked up at the Salt Lake City airport by John Binkley, the Chair of Region 8, and had the great opportunity to share a dinner with him and get the low-down on the region and the festival my first night in town. The following morning, Thursday, I attended two workshops, one on writing Documentary Theater pieces and one on the future of Devised Performance at KCACTF, as well as participated in a Brown Bag Lunch discussion on Acting/Directing with several attending professors. I was very pleased when some of those same professors followed me to my Artist as Citizen workshop, including E.E. Moe from Scottsdale Comm. College, and Darby Lofstrand from N.A.U., who become my good friends over the course of the week. I was pleasantly surprised to have 16 people come to the workshop, considering I had just arrived and hadn’t really had a chance to introduce myself to the festival. Of particular note was George Ye of the University of San Diego, who told me the class inspired him to lead a similar workshop with his students back in California. He emailed me later that night to share that he overheard students on the way out of the class saying, “Wow. That’s what it’s all about.” How cool.

On Friday, I responded to an imaginative and hilarious production of The Unseen Hand. Again, it was my surprise and delight when many of the cast joined me the following afternoon, Saturday, at my Pedagogy workshop. Though the sign-up sheet says we had twelve attendants, I’m quite sure there were some participants who must have missed the sheet, since I remember having at least 15 there. Either way, the class was wonderfully productive, and our explorations together allowed for a number of pertinent pedagogical issues to surface and be discussed.

In the end, the exchanges I had were amazingly rich. More than that, I’m grateful for the new friends I made, including: the students of Los Angeles Community College (“The Academy”) and Scottsdale Comm. College, Dr. Tom Woldt (Chair of Region V), Eric Bishop of MiraCosta College, and Matt Neves (Vice-Chair of the Region), just to name a handful.