By Jessie Hethcoat
From Feb. 14 to 20, UP's theater department assembled in Reno, Nev. for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, a regional competition for college theater departments on the west coast.
Not only was UP's "The Servant of Two Masters" chosen to be one of four plays performed there from a pool of 250, but junior Philip Orazio also walked away as a two-time regional champion.
"I'm still in a perpetual state of shock," Orazio said. "A lot of people told me that winning twice would be like getting hit by lightning twice."
Additionally, 15 UP students were chosen to compete in the Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship program.
Each of these students brought an acting partner from UP to compete with. All together, there were 32 students from UP in attendance.
Orazio's acting partner, Michael Onio, a UP graduate student who was also the stage director of "The Servant of Two Masters," won the best partner award from the Irene Ryan competition, which is only awarded to one partner.
ACTF is divided into eight regions. UP is part of region seven, which also has schools from Alaska, Northern California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, northern Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming.
The keynote speaker at the festival was UP's own Kunal Nayyar, a 2003 business alumnus and regular castmember of the television series, "The Big Bang Theory."
Kunal Nayyar attended the ACTF festival, winning the Mark Twain award for comedic brilliance as well as a fellowship to the Sundance Theater Lab.
Junior Jamie Kluth, who went to the competition as an acting partner for senior Zach Virden, is a fan of Nayyar.
After the final round of the competition, Nayyar invited the UP students to his hotel room, where they got to know him and shared stories.
"I grasped on to everything he was saying," Kluth said. "I thought he was really down to earth."
With about 340 candidates in the Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship Program, three UP students moved on to the finals, which consisted of 16 performers.
These were junior Connor Bond, Virden and Orazio. Senior Patrick Rexroat made it to the semifinals, which had 32 competitors.
"It just so happened that everyone in my hotel room was in the finals that week," Bond said. "We got cabin fever halfway through the week; it was actually really stressful."
Nonetheless, Bond enjoyed experience.
"It was a blast," he said.
Junior Sammi Boyd was one of the students in attendance.
She played Pantalone in the university's production of "The Servant of Two Masters" and was nominated to compete in the acting competition. Her partner was junior Connor Eifler.
The students were not the only ones who worked hard to get UP to the competition, however. Larry Larsen, drama professor and supervisor of the theater students, spent 13 hours driving a Penske truck 720 miles from Portland to Reno to transport "The Servant of Two Masters" set.
"There's nothing better when you're putting on a show to have drama majors as your audience," Larsen said. "I thought they did a great job."
The ACTF competition put the drama department in good spirits.
"It's more about showing off your hard work than a competition," Boyd said.
Boyd's impression of the competition matches what the festival's administration published on its Web site.
"The regional, or in some instances the state, festival is a gathering of people to see one another's work and to share ideas," the KCACTF Web site says.
Orazio, his partner Onio and Mindi Logan, their acting coach, will travel to Washington, D.C. for the national ACTF competition from April 12 to 18.
There, Orazio will compete against 16 other competitors in a much more concentrated space with other actors who have received the same recognition.
"We all work really hard in the theater department, and it was our time to show it to everyone," Kluth said. "Every time we went up on stage, we reminded ourselves to have fun and that this is what we love to do."
