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USI Theatre Students Win Awards in Milwaukee

February 1, 2016

In January, numerous University of Southern Indiana Theatre students gave up their winter break traveling to Milwaukee with the Performing Arts faculty to participate in the Region 3 competitions at The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF). KCACTF is a national theater program that hosts around 18,000 students from colleges and universities nationwide, allowing theater departments and students an opportunity to showcase their work and receive outside assessments and critiques from respondents and theater professionals. During its 47 years, University of Southern Indiana had the privilege of hosting KCACTF in 2002 and 2003. This year's USI Theatre students received a beautiful bounty of awards and special recognitions at the festival where they competed among other undergraduate as well as graduate students from Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio.

The Regional Design Competition allows students to showcase their speculative work in their given field of technical design specializing in lighting, costuming, scenic or sound. USI Theatre walked away with three student finalists, AJ Jones and Rachel Thomas for costumes and Nick Smith for lighting, with Smith ultimately advancing to the final round and winning the competition in his area. Chynna Hall participated in costume design and AJ Mason in lighting design, but neither advanced to the final rounds.

The National Awards for Theatrical Design Excellence focuses on realized designs that have appeared on stage. Jones won a national award for his costume design and Thomas won an award for her lighting design, both advancing past the finalist round. Smith's lighting design advanced him to the finalist round. Jones and Thomas will continue on to The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. later this spring where they will compete against regional winners from the seven other regions in KCACTF.

In addition, Smith was one of the recipients of The Stagecraft Institute of Las Vegas Award which is described as "an award for students who display the potential for success in their chosen area." As winner of this one-week regional scholarship for excellence, Smith will spend a week in Las Vegas attending a master class in lighting with housing, tuition and meals as part of the award.

This is the second year USI students have won the National Award in Lighting and the Stagecraft Institute award, beating out other non-graduate and graduate students competing for the awards. In 2015, Thomas took home both The National Award and Stagecraft Institute of Las Vegas Award in Lighting, while Stephanie Sauerheber, a 2015 USI Theatre graduate, received The Stagecraft Institute of Las Vegas Award in Costumes.

USI Theatre students also competed in the Irene Ryan Competition, which is a competition that provides recognition, honor and financial assistance to outstanding performers wishing to pursue further education. The nominees for this prestigious award were Cameron Ward and Hannah Michelle for their performances in The Grapes of Wrath and Enjoli Drake, Ashleigh Dulik and Aimee Grace for their performances in Tartuffe. While no one advanced to the National competition in this category at The Kennedy Center, all of the students performed well.

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