Region 8 of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival is comprised of Arizona, Central and Southern California, Hawaii, Southern Nevada, Utah and Guam.

 

Each year the KCACTF Region 8 Festival brings students and faculty together in mid February to see one another’s work and to share ideas. In addition to performances, there are a wide range of activities that in the past have included workshops and seminars on such topics as playwriting, auditioning, voice, movement, stage combat, theater for children, scene painting, scenery construction, and so on. There are sessions for beginning theater artists and the experienced faculty member.

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Students, faculty, and staff who bring productions to regional festivals are encouraged to attend the entire festival. All festival participants are urged to attend productions brought by their peers, participate as audience or auditioners in the Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship program, and to avail themselves of the full range of workshops, symposia, and exhibits that are part of each regional festival.

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Started in 1969 by Roger L. Stevens, the Kennedy Center’s founding chairman, the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF) is a national theater program involving 18,000 students from colleges and universities nationwide which has served as a catalyst in improving the quality of college theater in the United States. The KCACTF has grown into a network of more than 600 academic institutions throughout the country, where theater departments and student artists showcase their work and receive outside assessment by KCACTF respondents. Our goals are:

 

 

• To encourage, recognize, and celebrate the finest and most diverse work produced in university and college theater programs;

• To provide opportunities for participants to develop their theater skills and insight; and achieve professionalism

• To improve the quality of college and university theater in America;

• To encourage colleges and universities to give distinguished productions of new plays, especially those written by students; the classics, revitalized or newly conceived; and experimental works