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Wesleyan Students Nominated to Participate in Irene Ryan Acting Competition
released: 12/11/01
The Wesleyan Theatre Arts Department is proud to announce that several of its students have been nominated to participate in the Irene Ryan Acting Competition at this year's American College Theater Festival to be held at Carnegie Mellon University on January 3-8. These students were nominated for their performances in a Wesleyan production.

The nominated students are: alumni Josh Cale, Frank Green, and Clifton Taylor from last spring’s production of Master Harold…and the Boys; senior William Lizor and sophomore Erica Scanlon from last spring’s production of Pippin; freshman James Holland and senior Jack Lefebvre from this fall’s production of The Boys Next Door; and senior Michael Sniffen and junior Nicole Leedy from this fall’s Cabaret.

For the competition actors prepare both a monologue and a scene to perform with a partner. Partners from Wesleyan include: Kyle Snyder, Dawn Sizemore, Christopher Blackburn, and Vince Trimboli.

Lizor said, “Participating in the Irene Ryan competition last year was an incredibly rewarding experience. Not only did it give me the opportunity to hone my work as an actor, it also allowed me to see other actors presenting their best work as well. It was a real eye-opening experience to see tons of other people my age all excited about theater and working to expand their knowledge and talent."

The American College Theater Festival was 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 students nationwide and a network of more than 600 academic institutions throughout the country. KCACTF provides a venue where theater departments and student artists showcase their work and receive outside assessment by KCACTF respondents.

The goals of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival 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; to 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.”

Regarding Wesleyan’s participation in this competition, Barbara Burgess-Lefebvre, director of theatre at Wesleyan, said, “This is a wonderful chance for student actors to both check out what kind of competition is out there as well as receive specific responses about their own work. Competition at the Irene Ryan Festival is stiff and our students will be challenged. These challenges are essential to inspire young actors to achieve even more success.”