Denton, Peterson win awards at theatre festival

Home Culture Denton, Peterson win awards at theatre festival

Seniors Anne Peterson and Katherine Denton won awards for dramaturgy and directing, respectively, at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, which Saginaw Valley State University hosted Jan. 7 to 11.
“Both awards are fairly substantial,” Professor of Theatre George Angell said, “that is to say they’re rare. It’s not too often they come from schools as small as Hillsdale.”
Mostly coming from the Midwest, hundreds of students, professors, and professionals in the theater business attended the festival. Hillsdale’s theatre department sent 15 students to compete in competitions, attend shows and workshops, and network in the theater world.
Peterson won, along with a team, for her work in the “Design Storm” competition, in which teams of student festival attendees design shows around an assigned script. For Peterson’s group, that was Peter Shaffer’s “The Royal Hunt of the Sun.”
She was to act as the team’s dramaturge –– until inclement weather prevented the team’s director from making it to the festival. As her position as dramaturge was most similar to that of director, Peterson slipped into directing duties for the group in addition to her other work.
“Her team won while being one principle member short –– so I thought that was pretty cool,” Angell said.
The team worked on their plan over the course of the festival and presented it before a board of judicators on Jan. 11.
“The selection committee was pretty impressed with Anne’s work and in fact stopped the whole competition to comment on how great her dramaturgical work was, which is not something I’ve ever heard them do before,” Angell said.
The festival also awarded Denton for her work directing a 10-minute play, which was written for the festival by a Ball State University student, Molly Wagner.
Six 10-minute productions competed against each other for the competition. Angell said the chance to direct a play in the competition was an honor in its own right, let alone that Denton won.
The script, titled “Bytes,” related a conversation between a young couple discussing S&M –– but Denton said its not exactly how it sounds.
“It’s the tamest show about S&M that you will ever see. It’s really funny, really cute,” she said. “They’re on the internet looking up cat videos having this weird conversation.”
The cast and crew met on the first day of the competition and had six hours total of practice time to prepare for their Saturday showing.
The script itself won a finalist award at the regional festival and Wagner will take it to KCACTF nationals.
Hillsdale students also competed in the Irene Ryan acting competition. Students must be nominated based upon their performance in school productions to compete, and six Hillsdale students participated among the 400 other contestants.
Although no Hillsdale student won an acting award this year, Peterson said, in general, the theatre program did well for itself.
“There are always some really big schools that bring a ton of people and have a ton of resources. They are very easy to lose to,” Peterson said. “We’re such a tiny, little school; we have tiny program, but we always do really well considering our size.”

cwhitmer@hillsdale.edu