Topic: College of Fine Arts
March 13, 2009
This year, Marciel Greene, a Ball State senior theater design and technology major, will attend the national Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, to be held April 14-20 in Washington, D.C., in recognition of her lighting design work for the play "In the Blood."
For the fifth consecutive year, a student from Ball State University's Department of Theatre and Dance has been invited to participate as a national qualifier in the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF).
The KCACTF is a national theater program involving 18,000 students from colleges and universities across the country with the aim of improving the quality of college theater in the United States.
Students participating in the program compete at state and regional festivals in January and February. Those with the best and most diverse productions are selected to have their work showcased at the national festival at the Kennedy Center each spring.
This year, Marciel Greene, a Ball State senior theater design and technology major, will attend the national festival, to be held April 14-20 in Washington, D.C., in recognition of her lighting design work for the play "In the Blood."
Greene competed against more than 20 other student lighting designers at the regional level and eight designers at the national level before learning her work had been selected for inclusion in the national festival's production.
"To prepare for the competition, I created a display of my design process, including my research images, concept statement and an example of the lights that I designed and handmade for the show out of Ball jars," Greene said.
Last year, Greene was named runner-up in the festival for her light design for the production "The Wild Party."
Bill Jenkins, chair of Ball State's Department of Theatre and Dance, said having Ball State students participate in KCACTF's national festival five years in a row is a testament to the talent and quality of work being produced by students at the university.
"Having students win for five consecutive years places us in an elite status," he said. "Recognition by the Kennedy Center is our equivalency of a bowl game or NCAA Final Four; it says to the nation, we, the Ball State theater department, are a national player."
Greene attributes her success to the professors, mentors and friends within the Department of Theatre and Dance. She said she is very fortunate to have found a place where she can thrive as an artist and a developing individual.
"The thing I found most amazing at KCACTF is that we competed against programs with graduate students and undergraduates, and our department has successfully stood up against all other programs five years in a row," Greene said.
After graduation, Greene plans to travel to Illinois to work as the master electrician for the Illinois Shakespeare Festival. Following that, she plans to move to Chicago to pursue her design career.
By Ashley Keebler