Milwaukee

Today was my last day in Milwaukee, ACTF is over.
Thank God.

I had fun, but the rooming situation reminded me A LOT of high school. Aside from the rehash of my teen years, I really don't have anything to complain about. Well, maybe that it's nearly 5a.m. and I've been working extremely hard all week and I'm exhausted. I can't stop thinking so why not blog? Who knows, I'll probably be able to sleep after I finish this post.

Our show was a big success! The Shape of Things may not have moved on to the national competition, but it gained our department a lot of respect throughout our region. (KCACTF Region III: Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois.) The audience's response to the show was amazing! We got great feedback from the respondents on the acting, design, and tech aspects of the show, and.....we almost won the Golden Hand Truck Award! XD Out of all the productions that took place in the theatre space we used the house crew nominated us for this award, which means they thought our tech crew was the safest and most efficient crew they observed. Go us!

We also had two students from our department make it to the semi-final round of Irene Ryans! (It's an acting competition and only eight out of 270 nominees and their partners get to this round.) This is also big because it puts our school's name out there and proves that small departments can achieve greatness.

Sadly this year I didn't have time to make it to any of the work shops I wanted to participate in. We had too much going on with the show. I was really excited about one that worked on how to "act out a song." I even went to a library to track down sheet music, it was required that you have it. I kid you not, it wasn't even five minutes after I copied the music I needed that I discovered our time to load the show's things into the loading dock/holding area was at the same time as my work shop. I nearly cried. Silly thing to be upset about, but I really had my heart set on it.

Our hotel hosted an opening night party for the festival. It was so much fun! We mostly stuck together as a department, but I got to meet a few new people there and throughout the week. I got an ego boost from John, he complemented me on my dancing. He's fun to dance with himself; I made him promise me that he'd show me the good clubs in Indy when we got back.

I did find time to see three shows, all at the Pabst Theatre in downtown Milwaukee. Dracula was amazing! We made sure to get there before house opened so we could fight our way to the front of the crowd and sit close. The set was HUGE! The tech was awesome, they had a great dance at the beginning of the play and because we did get to sit in the third row it felt like we were in the scenes.
I also saw an original student production called Arts or Crafts. It too was impressive, it made you think about things. And their set was so interesting, the concept was origami, everything was flat on the floor and then pieces folded together to create the scene's furniture. It sort of looked like a pop-up book. The only other scenic elements where two framed projection screens. Nearly everything about the production was interesting, even intermission, we went out to the lobby and got to make our own art or craft.
The other show was the first live musical that could just sit back and watch. My only other musical theatre experience includes the time I ran sound for our musical production and movies. I'm sad to say that I was dissapointed. The entire thing was cheesy and hard to understand. None of it was projected well enough to reach the balcony seat that I had chosen.

For me this year's ACTF was an amazing experience. I had a great time. I'm saving all the good memories and letting go of the extra drama. I feel that I learned a lot.
Oh! One small thing, I tried something totally new...Alpha Psi had a dinner the last night of the festival and I tried octopus. Surprisingly it's not bad!
I even managed not to have a single hang over. Pretty impressive considering I just turned 21 and attended the American COLLEGE THEATRE Festival, huh?

For those of you who have no idea what I just talked about and would like to know more about ACTF check out these links: http://www.kcactf.org/
http://www.kcactf3.org/