Three students from the Department of Performing & Fine Arts were awarded national fellowships at the 49th Annual Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, held April 17-22 at the John F. Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. Adele Kennedy, Megan Macker, and Maddie Nguyen were each awarded the top honor in their area of study, taking three out of the top eight individual student awards, and earned the opportunity to work or study with national theaters or institutes this summer.
Adele Kennedy ’17 was awarded the National Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA) Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF) Student Dramaturgy Award, in association with Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), and a fellowship to the National New Play Network (NNPN) Kennedy Center Playwright’s Workshop. The award is designed to recognize contributions by student dramaturgs to the conception, development, and production of theater within their colleges and universities, or to educational projects in dramaturgy, which deals mainly with research and development of plays or operas.
Megan Macker ’18 was awarded the Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF) Fellowship. She will be an assistant set designer on two new plays at a CATF theater in West Virginia. This fellowship provides outstanding student designers and technicians with the opportunity to showcase their work at regional festivals, where they will receive valuable feedback from professionals working in the field.
Maddie Nguyen ’20 was awarded the National Institute for Theatre Journalism and Advocacy (ITJA), which comes with a fellowship to the Eugene O’Neill Critics Institute. Once called the National Critics Institute, the newly envisioned ITJA was established to assist in elevating the level of arts criticism and to provide writers the opportunity to grow at the same pace as the artists, whose work they review and interpret.
The three students were part of a group of 38 students and five faculty from the University of Portland who spent February 20-24, 2017 at the Pacific Northwest regional Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival competition. Their top awards at the regional competition earned them the opportunity to participate in the national Kennedy Center awards in Washington, DC, this month.
The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival is a national theater program involving 20,000 students from colleges and universities nationwide annually. For 46 years, the organization has served as a catalyst in improving the quality of college theater in the United States. KCACTF has grown into a network of more than 700 academic institutions throughout the country.
Learn more at this link.