Two Hillsdale theatre students advanced to the semifinals and above in multiple competitions at a regional theatre competition in January.

About a dozen Hillsdale students and faculty traveled to University of Michigan-Flint for the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival which ran Jan. 9-13, according to Professor of Theatre James Brandon. Hillsdale students competed alongside students from schools in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The festival included various workshops and competitions covering areas from performance to playwriting to journalism.

“Students have an opportunity to compete against their peers from around the region, and then the festival itself, in addition to the performances and the competitions, offers workshops led by theatre faculty from throughout the region,” Brandon said. “So it’s sort of like a theatre festival and a professional conference and an audition all set up into one.”

Junior Emily Griffith competed in the musical theatre intensive and advanced to the final round — she was one of 18 students to advance to the final out of 100 competitors. She is, according to Brandon, the first Hillsdale student ever to advance to the finals in this competition.

 Junior Kenda Showalter competed in the Irene Ryan acting competition and advanced to the semifinals. Showalter also placed second in the theatre journalism and advocacy competition.

Griffith said she was surprised she advanced to the final round and that her success was due to the excellence of Hillsdale’s Theatre department. According to Griffith, most of her competitors in the musical theatre intensive were Bachelor of Fine Arts, or BFA,  students who spend a lot more time on theatre than she does at Hillsdale.

“I’m a double major, I want to go to law school, and this is not what I do all the time, but it was great to know that the Hillsdale Theatre department prepared me enough that I could go head to head with these people who have been doing music and theatre 24/7 — that says a lot about our faculty,” she said.

Brandon said the advanced competition at the festival makes it a great experience for the Hillsdale students who attend.

“Really, all those BFA students are doing is trade school,” he said. “They’re taking all acting classes, they’re not doing the liberal arts thing. We have graduate students that they’re competing against sometimes. So it’s nice, because it’s not a forgiving environment, so you kind of have to hone your energy.”

Griffith said she and all the students who advanced to the final round of the musical theatre intensive had individual sessions with Broadway professionals.

“I was able to be coached by a Broadway veteran and a woman who was on tour with the touring Broadway ‘Mean Girls’ company,” Griffith said.

Showalter advanced to the semifinal round of the Irene Ryan acting competition for her second year in a row. During winter break, she submitted a video recording of her performing two different monologues.

“They announced the first evening of the festival who was moving onto the semifinal. So from there, you perform one of your monologues and then a scene in person at the festival,” Showalter said.

Showalter said she was excited to have advanced in the competition again.

“I want to get any experience that I can performing, especially in a competitive environment, because I don’t get that anywhere else,” she said. “It’s a very different style — the selections you pick are very important and introducing yourself was also a big part of it. So it was just a lot of different things that I don’t usually do.”

Brandon said seeing Hillsdale students advance in this competition is typically a benchmark for the theatre faculty to determine whether the department is healthy.

“We feel like if things are going well, we ought to be able to get at least one or two people in the semifinal round,” he said. “After that, it’s kind of a crapshoot. Different judges have different rubrics, I guess, is the best way to think about it.”

Chairman and Associate Professor of Theatre Christopher Matsos said he doesn’t always agree with the judging in the Irene Ryan acting competition.

“I was really proud of Kenda that she made it to the semifinals, but she every bit should have been one of the final contestants, as probably some of our other students should have,” he said. “But I’m biased.”

Showalter also competed in the theatre journalism and advocacy competition and placed second.

“They’re working on practical dramatic reviews and criticism, and so Kenda wrote a review of one of the shows at the festival,” Brandon said. “It’s really a workshop in training people how to write about the arts. With a newspaper or online, you’re dealing with a fairly sophisticated live event and write about it in a way that a normal person will be interested in reading. It’s the kind of event our kids tend to do pretty well in.”

Brandon said a great benefit of attending the festival is the opportunity to experience the wider world of theatre outside Hillsdale.

“We are in a bubble here at Hillsdale,” Brandon said. “We’re very different from most of these other schools, and so I think a lot of times a KCACTF gives them a more reasonable expectation of what the field looks like. Sometimes I laughingly call some of the speakers at KCACTF the anti-CCA — very much the other side of the spectrum, but I think that’s healthy.”

Griffith agreed.

“It is always really good to get out into the theatre community and see art and talk to people that will challenge you because theatre so often reflects the current social and political climate,” Griffith said. “Going to KCACTF at a college campus like Flint as Hillsdale students meant that we were challenged in the type of art that we were presented with.”

Chairman and Associate Professor of Theatre Christopher Matsos said festivals like KCACTF are great opportunities to represent Hillsdale to others.

“I think that our students are just incredible individuals. I’ve never been prouder to be anywhere than I have been here,” he said. “I’ve taught in many other places and Hillsdale far exceeds all of them and that’s because of the quality and integrity of the students. To see that integrity played out in these various workshops and activities and competitions is really rewarding.”

Brandon said getting to watch performances put on by other colleges is a unique experience, too.

“It’s always fun to watch a good play, but you’re watching a good play in a room full of 1000 theatre students,” he said. “It’s the most electric audience you’ll have because they know what’s good and they know what goes into making it good and so the reactions are a lot of fun.”

The variety of workshops students can participate in is vast. Senior Chris Dick said he and senior Jack Leatherwood attended a puppeteering workshop where they learned to operate Bunraku puppetry, a Japanese style of puppet theatre.

“It was fun to direct some Bunraku puppetry,” Dick said. 

Brandon said he’s looking forward to the festival next year.

“We often have students that show up and they go one year and they do well, but it is one of those things where you know, after you’ve been there once and you really understand the lay of the land, you could be much more competitive the following year,” he said. “So I’ll be eager — we had a lot of first time students go this year — I’d be eager to see how they perform next year at the festival.”