The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF) has awarded a Certificates of Merit to the cast and company of The Forgetting River for Outstanding Ensemble Work, to Drama M.F.A. candidate Lauren Shell for Puppet Design, and to U.Va. Drama Associate Professor Marianne Kubik for Devising and Directing.

With the help of physical theatre, puppetry, and ensemble devising, The Forgetting River imagined the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice from a point of view ancient mythology never reveals: Eurydice’s. By examining the story’s plot from her perspective, this original stage production unveiled a woman facing life-altering choices that resonate across cultures, past and present, endeavoring to ask how we shape our future.

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.  For more information on the KCACTF please click here.

Photo: UVA Today