STUDENT CENTER: Conquering KCACTF —Day 3: Costume Parade and Feasting on P.F. Chang's

Day 3 of the festival brought what's to be expected - more great performances and more coffee concoctions to combat the exhaustion.

Our group started the day by visiting Towson's intimate Mainstage theater (my favorite at the university) to see University of the Arts' production of THE WALLS by Lisa Dillman. The show follows a scholarly young woman anxiously studying women with mental illnesses after her own mother's untimely death. Intense in all the right ways, each actor delivered an amazing, raw performance. It was just one of those shows which makes you forget all sense of time and space. Your mind is completely immersed in the story in front of you, and it was definitely an interesting one.

Everyone raved about the show through lunch, including Brooke.

"The play had many different layers of dealing with mental illness," she said. "It was most successful because of how honestly the actors portrayed their roles. It's very easy to over-do portraying a mentally unstable character, but they didn't do that at all."

With a rather heavy start to the morning, the day's focus progressed to Tuesday afternoon's costume parade. Tori dressed in her Puck costume (pictured above) from last spring's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM while Brett modeled Emily's equally eccentric Oberon costume, Emily dressed as Titania and Professor Misenheimer dressed as one of the faerie puppeteers. It was a bit nostalgic seeing her designs worn again, and an enjoyable afternoon overall.

(Brett, Tori, Professor Misenheimer and Emily before the costume parade)

Dinner brought a long-awaited trip to P.F. Chang's, where we feasted on an embarrassingly large spread of Chinese food. Carnivores and vegetarians alike selected countless appetizers, entreés and desserts to share. We spent a few hours at the restaurant, filling up on the best meal I have ever had at a P.F. Chang's and conversing with our professors and friends.

(Myself holding our giant dessert at P.F. Chang's)

We all split up for a fun evening - Becky and Emily to the extravagant Towson Center Mall, Professor Misenheimer and Dr. Simone to LAUGHING AT LIFE: A PERFORMANCE OF KYOGEN PLAYS presented by St. Mary's College (which Dr. Simone later declared as his favorite production at festival) and the rest of us headed to workshops.

We spent a surprising informative hour at "You Want Me to do What? With Who?" Acting and Directing the Intimate Scene," hosted by the KCACTF Region 2 Workshop Coordinator, Lars Tatom. Even though the original instructor was unable to present at festival, Lars did an awesome job filling in. He had the whole room laughing while discussing some normally uncomfortable topics, nudity, sex and intimacy in the theater. We learned a lot, and headed back to our hotel for the much-anticipated Werewolf reunion with our friends from the College of Southern Maryland (CSM).

Werewolf is basically a variation of Mafia, Witch Hunt, Assassin or any other of those role playing games. Tori, Makeda, Brooke and I learned to play last year in a crowded hotel room with our CSM friends, and we were determined to come back with a vengeance. While still considered "newbies" and strangers to some of the other players, I think we held our own pretty well and survived as long as we could.

After indulging in leftover Chinese, even though it was 2 a.m., we were left to pack, as it was our last night in Maryland.

Mary/Tori/Makeda/Brooke Starbucks count: 28 (I would have included another picture, but our hotel maids recycled our cup collection.)

Freddy got a little scared of the puppet...

Our friendly faerie just giving Makeda a head rub.

Mary Best has a lifelong relationship with theater, from dancing to stage managing to writing and blogging about it in college. A junior at St. Bonaventure University, she serves as the editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper and spends a lot of time with the theater department, covering college theater for BroadwayWorld since October 2012. A lifelong Buffalo resident, Mary hopes to move to the Big Apple in December 2013 to pursue covering theater full time. She keeps a short haircut and guitar handy for the day she (finally) plays Maria Von Trapp in the Sound of Music. She’s Raúl Esparza’s biggest fan and likes photobombing, Seth Rudetsky videos and finding non-dairy alternatives.

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