KCACTF

Ok, so I know I haven’t posted in a while, but life has been crazy, so among the other things I want to tell everyone about, I am going to start with the second week being back in North Dakota.
The week of Jan. 15-20, I went the Kennedy Center American Collegiate Theatre Festival; most people refer to it as KCACTF or just ACTF. This year ACTF was in Ames, Iowa at the Iowa State University. It lasted from Sunday till Saturday and I had a great time!
I was really unsure about how I would view it when I was done, I am not normally good in big social situations and in some ways this wasn’t really a big difference to what I expected. But I like to think I did a fairly good job at coping. I did stick kind of close to other people from UND, but I think it helped me get to know them more. Which was needed considering I will be working with those guys as long as I am at UND (well, most of them).
We left Sunday morning at like 6:00 in the morning, which sucked, I pretty slept the entire trip to Ames, I got up for Breakfast and lunch…well you know Sunday was rather uneventful, we checked in went swimming, which I guess was pretty fun, there were a lot of drunks down in the pool area which was funny to watch.
I spent most of Monday watching the Irene Ryan scenes, which is a competition at the festival. I knew six contestants and their partners from UND and only one of those six made it to the next round, which I thought was absolutely ridiculous. Obviously I didn’t get to watch every scene in the first round of performance but, out of the scenes I did see, I thought it was bad judgment on who moved forward and who didn’t. I did find out later the entire system is flawed so it is just kind of a big game of chance and not necessarily talent, but whatever, it’s done it’s over with.
Over the course of the week I went and saw two full-scale productions. The first one I saw was God of Carnage, which I have to say, was a really good production. I had never seen the show and was definitely not expecting projectile vomit to happen, but it did, which was a little gross at first, but I also think effective as well. The only thing I found was that perhaps the actors should have been more reserved in the first half of the play just to add to the second half of it a little bit more, that was my only pet peeve and despite that I think they still did a fantastic job.
The other show I saw was called Six Characters. I just thought this overall performance was great; it wasn’t as life changing to me, as it was to some of my fellow UND theatre students, but it was good. I really enjoyed the overall performance and how it was all put together and then kind of message it sent. My pet peeve about this show, wasn’t even about the show, it was about the people afterward. I agree that it was as big of a deal as some people were saying it was, but I dislike when theatre people go into a show and then afterwards sit and critique it for hours. I understand a few things here or there, but to sit and just pick a part the entire performance, I feel like that is a little rude.
The actors in the show are just trying to do the best they can with what they are given. That is the exact same thing that we as theatre students do for performances, we go out there and try to do our best.
Friday morning I got to go to a workshop called ‘Acting after KCACTF’ where, Rich Sommers came in and spoke to us about his experience after KCACTF and now making her profession acting. It was a very informative session and I really enjoyed and liked what he had to say, for those of you who don’t know Rich Sommers is a part of the cast of the T.V. show Mad Men. It was really great; at least I thought it was. Apart from that, I also got to learn some basics about staging an onstage fight, which was really fun to watch, unfortunately I didn’t get to participate but I got to watch which was better than nothing.
The dances weren’t anything special, at least form what I understand, I didn’t actually go because I hate dances. They make me feel awkward and it’s just an uncomfortable situation that I never put myself in. But I really enjoyed getting to know all the people from UND better, which was probably one of my highlights of the trip.
So, after reading over this I have realized that this is kind of uneventful but yea. I just felt that I should write this blog and hopefully now that I am back in school and into the swing of things I will be able to write more and everything. I hope everyone had an amazing holiday season and I hope your 2012 is going swimmingly.