Theater Students Win Regionals, to Perform at National Kennedy Center Festival
by By Mallery Laing

Feb. 17, 2006 -- Five University of Central Florida students will compete at the national Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival in April after they won top honors last week at a regional competition in Jacksonville.

The four UCF students who won first-prize awards in the festival’s Irene Ryan Acting Competition and a student who received first place in the directing category will travel to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., for the national competition April 17 to 23. Several other UCF students were picked as alternates for the national event.

The regional competition, which features duos performing scenes, was held last week at Florida Community College at Jacksonville.

“Having been involved with the Kennedy Center festival for over 30 years, I have never heard of a university that has produced all four winning teams in the Irene Ryan Acting Competition,” said Roberta Sloan, chair and artistic director of the UCF Theatre Department. “We absolutely swept this year’s regional festival.”

The duo of Ben Hope, a senior from Birmingham, Ala., and Ed Davis, a senior from Palm Beach, won one of the first-place awards in the Irene Ryan Acting Competition. They also won the Comedy Acting Award and the Diversity Award. Michael Swickard, a second-year Master of Fine Arts student from Daytona Beach, and Margaret-Ellen Jeffreys, a first-year Master of Fine Arts student from Raleigh, N.C., won first prize in the Irene Ryan Acting Competition and the Musical Theatre award. The four students are musical theater majors.

The alternates in the Irene Ryan competition also are from UCF. Amanda Stephen, a sophomore from West Palm Beach, and Charita Coleman, a sophomore from Miami, were named the first alternates, while Davis and Jenny Ashman, a senior from Anchorage, Alaska, were named second alternates.

Tiffany Ford, a senior theater major from Palm Beach, received the first-place award for directing and will direct an original, 10-minute play at the national festival. Junior theater major Joseph Fletcher, of Seminole, received second place in directing and will be the region’s alternate if Ford cannot attend.

Sarah Yates, an Orlando resident who is a Master of Fine Arts student in design, was selected as the first alternate for the Barbizon Design Award for her design of “Margo Veil, An Entertainment.” Emily Strickland, a senior from Jacksonville, won an honorable mention in the Costume Award category for her designs of “Guys and Dolls.”

A UCF cast performed "Margo Veil, an Entertainment" at the regional festival and may be asked to present the show again at the national festival. Sloan expects to find out in early March if "Margo Veil" will be selected for the national competition.

“The accolades that came our way as a department and the comments about how UCF ‘swept’ the awards at the entire festival made me so proud of our wonderfully talented students and our dedicated and gifted faculty,” Sloan said.

Started in 1969, the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival is a nonprofit organization that recognizes excellence in theater and provides important bridges to the professional theater world. The festival honors excellence of overall production and offers student artists individual recognition through awards and scholarships in playwriting, acting, criticism, directing and design.

For more information about the festival, go to www.kennedy-center.org/education/actf/

DATE POSTED
February 17, 2006

CONTACT
Roberta Sloan
407-823-3072
rrsloan@mail.ucf.edu

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