UAB students were honored during the Region IV Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival this past week, winning awards for excellence and outstanding work in three categories.
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| "Postcards to J. Bird" |
UAB Department of Theatre major Natalie Kinsaul of Corner and Department of Music major Kevin Peek of Birmingham won the KCACTF Sound Design Award and National Festival Fellowship. The pair won for their original compositions and sound effects for Bertolt Brecht’s “The Caucasian Chalk Circle,” presented by Theatre UAB in October 2011. Theatre UAB collaborated with the Department of Music for the show’s music, and student composers Kinsaul and Peek worked for months composing original music for the words and lyrics in Brecht’s songs. Kinsaul and Peek will now go to the national KCACTF festival in Washington, D.C., in April.
Theatre major Eddie Moncrief of Hoover won the Region IV David Weiss-SETC Award for Design Excellence in Scene Design for Sam Shepard’s “Buried Child.”
Theatre major Adriane Johnson of Alabaster won an award for Outstanding Production Book in the Stage Management category for “Postcards to J. Bird,” a play written by UAB Theatre alumnus Stephen Webb in 2008 while he was still a student. In 2011 it won a prestigious KCACTF David L. Shelton Full-Length Student Playwriting Award. Theatre UAB included it in its season and performed it in November to sold-out crowds. Theatre UAB was invited to perform “Postcards to J. Bird” at the Region IV festival.
The festival performance of “Postcards to J. Bird” was very well received by patrons, who were moved by the poignant story between a mother and son, says UAB Theatre Chair Kelly Allison.
“The two professional respondents were impressed by the quality of the performance. One of the two respondents, Nelson Pressley, has been chief drama critic for both major daily newspapers in Washington, D.C., so this was high praise,” Allison says. “We’re very proud of what our students have accomplished.”