Jeremiah Ripley & Bruce McGlumphy in The Elephant Man
On Saturday, January 14 at 1:30 p.m., students from the Fairmont State University Theatre Department will compete in the final round of the Region 2 competition of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. The FSU production to be featured is Bernard Pomerance’s The Elephant Man, directed by Jeffrey Ingman
On Thursday, January 12, two performances of The Elephant Man, on a pay-what-you-can basis, will be presented in Wallman Hall Theatre at 2:00 in the afternoon, and at 7:30 the same evening. All funds raised by these performances will be used to help offset the costs of participating in the festival.
The Region 2 festival will be held at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. There are seven regions for competition. In order to compete, adjudicators are invited to attend performances and, in turn, invite a few chosen productions to compete in their regional festival.
The initial competition consists of between 40 to 50 productions, which is winnowed to 15 semi-finalists, and then, at the end, 8 finalists. While FSU has competed on a regular basis and has always reached its regional pool of participants, this is its first time that the FSU Theatre Department has made it into the final pool, and only the second time in the past decade that a college or university from West Virginia has made it this far.
In addition, three FSU students have won meritorious awards: Matt Snyder and Cora Childress for lighting and costumes respectively for the FSU production of Cabaret, and Lakyn Arrick for her costumes for The Elephant Man.
Also, six FSU students have been nominated for the Irene Ryan Acting Award: Bruce McGlumphy, Jeremiah Ripley and Lillian Gaylord for The Elephant Man; Cecily Collins and Tyler Kovar for Cabaret, with Rennes Carbaugh, also from Cabaret, as alternate.
